ROWELL, KENNETH (1920-1999)

"The Sleeping Beauty - 2 Nursemaids - Prologue" (1973)
mixed media
cm
signed lower left
*exhibited at the South Yarra Gallery, Melbourne, 1973
*private collection, Sydney
 
Rowell AM was a prominent Australian Costume & Set Designer. He lived and worked as an artist and theatre designer in London from 1952, frequently returning to work in Australia until 1982 when he moved back to Melbourne. At the National Library Of Australia, Rowell’s costume design archive comprises of about 1,400 designs for costumes and sets, as well as notebooks, sketchbooks, programs and photographs. It documents 87 productions he worked on between 1943 and 1993, often in collaboration with his wife, Victoria, who painted the fabric of his costumes. The National Library held a large retrospective in 2022 of his work entitled "Kenneth Rowell : Designer For The Stage". While Rowell almost always designed both costume and set designs for a production, this exhibition also contained a selection of hand-drawn costume designs, as well as other items that give us a sense of his life in the theatre, who he was as an artist and the vast scope of theatre productions he was involved with in his lifetime. His works are represented in countless major institutions around Australia, particularly the National Library Of Australia & National Gallery Of Australia.
 
This is the original design for the "2 Nursemaids" for the Australian Ballet's iconic "The Sleeping Beauty" production at the Sydney Opera House in 1973. It was the FIRST show at the newly built Opera House!! This design along with the other designs were exhibited at the South Yarra Gallery in Melbourne in November 1973!!