This exhibition showcases 24 designs for fabric or wallpaper made by Kathleen (Kate) O’Connor in Paris in the late 1920s. It’s an opportunity to see work not exhibited before and a window into a less known aspect of her art practice. The designs will be shown alongside paintings of O’Connor and contemporaries – Margaret Preston, Thea Proctor and Grace Cossington-Smith, all women who worked in an intense way with colour and design. Inclusion of personal ephemera and an audio interview will reveal something of the personality and life of this extraordinary woman.
Kathleen O’Connor, the very determined daughter of C.Y. O’Connor, left Western Australia in 1905 for Europe at the age of twenty-nine and spent most of the next fifty years of her life in France returning finally to Perth in 1955. She was drawn to Paris as so many artists were in those days, including the likes of Picasso and Modigliani, and took classes, painted and exhibited there. She was a serious artist and never contemplated any other occupation. Apart from painting she designed and painted fabrics for fashion and furnishings and wrote and reported on both art and design for Perth publications all of which supplemented her income.
