The Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre will present Ode: Margaret Olley and Sally Anderson from 12 September 2025, the latest in an exclusive series of exhibitions that foster new work inspired by Margaret Olley and her legacy.
Margaret Olley AC (1923–2011) is recognised as one of Australia's most celebrated painters, renowned for her contribution to the tradition of still life and interior painting. The exhibition series aims to continue the conversation around still life painting in Australia today.
As part of her 2025 residency at the Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio at Tweed Regional Gallery, Gadigal/Sydney-based artist Sally Anderson created a new body of work for this exhibition. It responded not only to Olley's remarkable still life paintings, but also to selected objects from the much-loved re-creation of Olley's home studio, permanently on display at the Gallery.
Anderson said her approach was to deliberately juxtapose objects borrowed from Olley's home studio re-creation with items of personal significance.
"I've deliberately positioned objects borrowed from Olley's home studio re-creation alongside personally significant items within my compositions to give them new context and meaning," she said.
"I think a lot about arranging; how we arrange thoughts, time, memories, households, feelings, gardens, furniture, objects, colour – and how rearranging the order of things ultimately shifts meaning, revealing new truths, narratives, and histories.
"I find the arrangement of Olley's home studio re-creation completely fascinating – the layers of objects, surfaces, textiles, smells," Anderson said.
Cleverly interweaving deeply personal experiences and themes of domesticity, care, maternity and mortality within her work, Anderson invites audiences to reconsider Olley's still life practice in a new light.
With notable loans from both public and private collections, Ode brings together still life paintings by Olley spanning four decades, including masterworks such as Banksia 1970 (Maitland Regional Art Gallery), significant works from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and rarely seen pieces from private collections.
Gallery Director Ingrid Hedgcock said the exhibition highlights Olley's continuing influence on contemporary artists.
"Seeing these works alongside Anderson's bold interchanges between abstraction and representation, we bear witness to Olley's continuing influence as one of Australia's most significant painters of still life and interiors," Ms Hedgcock said.
"Since opening in 2014, Olley's home studio re-creation at the Gallery has inspired many artists invited to create new work in response. A lot of people look at the re-creation and see chaos, but to Olley it was a carefully gathered world of subject matter for her paintings."
Olley's Paddington home studio functioned as both site and subject matter for nearly 50 years. Its re-creation at the Gallery offers audiences a vivid portal into her practice, continuing her legacy of inspiration and generosity to fellow artists.
Ode: Margaret Olley and Sally Anderson will be on display at the Margaret Olley Art Centre from 12 September 2025 until 8 March 2026. A special public program, Sally Anderson in Conversation with Professor Lisa Slade, will take place on Friday 19 September 2025 at 6 pm. Bookings are essential: gallery.tweed.nsw.gov.au/whats-on.
This exhibition is a Tweed Regional Gallery initiative. The Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio is generously supported by benefactor Mr Tim Fairfax AC through the Tweed Regional Gallery Foundation Ltd.
