‘To me, painting and drawing are natural, I’ve done them for as long as I can remember’. Mirka Mora
Mirka Mora in her studio Photograph: Fred Kroh (2014)
About the Exhibition | Mirka Mora is one of Melbourne’s best-loved artists and most colourful personalities. This special exhibition, drawn from the treasure trove that is her home studio spans her entire practice, from her first surviving painting through her most recently completed works and includes paintings, drawings, soft sculptures, tapestries, sketchbooks and ceramics.
Rarely seen in public before, the works will be displayed in the former home of Mirka’s close friends and Heide founders John and Sunday Reed, the modernist house now known as Heide II.
Mirka and her husband Georges arrived in Melbourne from Paris in 1951 and brought with them a taste of la vie bohème. Their studio residence at 9 Collins Street became a hub for Melbourne’s bohemian set and they became friends with many now famous Australian artists such as Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan and Fred Williams, as well as art patrons John and Sunday Reed.
Mirka observed that to know the Reeds was to ‘sharpen your sensitivity’ for they ‘could read a painting like a musician can read music.’ To her they were more than friends ‘because they could read my soul.’
A talented and dedicated artist, whose career spans over sixty years, for Mirka, art and life are inseparable. She has long captivated audiences with instantly recognisable works created in a remarkable range of materials and styles, all created in Mirka’s sensuous, naïve style and marked by her idiosyncratic iconography of recurring motifs, from children, dogs and birds to angels, devils and snakes.
The works in this exhibition lead us through Mirka’s first years in Melbourne living at 9 Collins Street, family beach holidays at Aspendale, her love of St Kilda, the joys and demands of relationships and motherhood, and the pain of separation and loss.
The exhibition runs from Saturday 17 May – Sunday 9 November 2020
Related Programs
ART TALK WITH WILLIAM MORA
Sunday 25 May, 2pm
William Mora, director of William Mora Galleries and curator Kendrah Morgan discuss some of the many treasured objects and images from Mirka’s studio that have never before been publicly displayed. Celebrating Mirka’s sixty year association with Heide and her close ties to John and Sunday Reed, William will share personal accounts of one of Melbourne’s most colourful personalities and best-loved artists.
FREE with admission
EXHIBITION TOURS
Every Thursday, 5 June – 28 August, 2pm
FREE with admission
For further information and other programs related to the exhibition see the Heide MOMA website.