DREDGE, MARGARET (1928-2001)

“Death In A Field” (1965)
Oil on canvas
33 x 44cm
Signed lower right
*Macquarie Galleries
*private collection, Rose Bay
 
Dredge was a pioneering and underrated female Australian Abstract Expressionist. She trained with Inez Hutchinson in the mid 1950s. Her early paintings were figurative & still life works, but her output soon led into abstraction, which was to become the focus of her artistic development. In 1958 she joined the Beaumaris Art Group and began exhibiting in their group exhibitions. Soon after she joined the Contemporary Artists Society (CAS) and the Melbourne Contemporary Artists (MCA). She participated in numerous group exhibitions and also held five solo shows between 1961-1979. In 1965 with group exhibitions and two solo exhibitions to her credit, a solo exhibition at the Argus Gallery bought her name to critical attention, with mentions during the year by Alan McCulloch in The Herald and a review of the exhibition by Bernard Smith in The Age. She was commended in the 1970 Inez Hutchison Award; was the co-winner in the 1976 Shire of Flinders Art Award; and was awarded the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery 21st Exhibition Acquisitive prize of 1978. Major institutions also acquired her work, including Art Bank, Commonwealth Bank and Ballarat Fine Art Gallery. She held her final solo exhibition in 1979, after which she withdrew from the limelight due to increasing commercial pressure and also as a reaction against the assimilation of post-painterly abstraction into Australian art, heralded by ‘The Field' exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1968. A huge retrospective "1960-2001" was held at the Shoalhaven Regional Gallery in 2012.