Lot 33

Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 27 March 2011, lot 232
Private collection, Melbourne

Although Erica McGilchrist's 50 year career boasts more than 40 solo exhibitions, her artistic merits remain relatively unknown to the Australian art world. Her works mine the realm of the subconscious, often drawing upon her own experiences and allowing her mood to dictate her stylistic approach. She therefore alternated between abstraction and figuration, often combined both, and cemented her contribution to Melbourne Modernism of the 1950's.
Setting her apart from her female counterparts, however, was Erica's determined support of women's rights and artistic movement. In 1975 Erica and Lucy Lippard, amongst others, established the Women's Art Register, aimed at forwarding the feminist movement in the arts.
After her death in 2014, McGilchrist ensured that her legacy of arts education and advocacy for the support of women artists was continued, by bequeathing her estate to the Heide Museum of Modern Art, in order to fund further exhibitions of work by women artists.