Olive Cotton
(Australia 11 Jul 1911–27 Sep 2003)
- Title
- Skeleton leaf
- Year
- 1964
- Media category
- Photograph
- Materials used
- gelatin silver photograph, vintage
- Dimensions
-
24.7 x 19.6cm image; 25.0 x 20.0cm sheet
- Signature & date
- Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased with funds provided by the Photography Collection Benefactors' Program 2006
- Accession number
- 175.2006
- Location
- Not on display
- Further information
Olive Cotton grew up on the outskirts of Sydney where she was exposed to the range of contemporary thinking whether scientific, political or artistic. Her childhood friendship with Max Dupain and joint love of photography led to their eventual though brief marriage and her work in the Max Dupain studio during the war years. Cotton knew Harold Cazneaux and studied photographic styles from pictorialism onwards. Her own work was characterized, as Helen Ennis has written, by 'an abiding love of nature, astute powers of observation, a democratic approach to subject matter, and a sheer delight in and mastery of the photographic medium.'
Cotton worked as a photographer until her second marriage to Ross McInerney and move to country NSW in 1946. Until 1964, when she set up a studio in Cowra she concentrated on childrearing and farm life. Rediscovered in 1981 her work was much sought after through the 1980s and 1990s and she continued taking photographs and printing her own work until 1996.
- Bibliography (3)
-
'Infinite flatness: exploring the intangible' by Vigen Galstyan, pg. 28-29, Look Oct 2012, Oct 2012, 29 (illus.).
'Lets make an artwork: Leaf life', pg. 73-74., Making art connections: Visual arts years 7 & 8 2010, 2010, 73 (illus.).
Helen Ennis (Australia) (Author), Olive Cotton, Domain, 2000, 46 (illus.).
- Exhibition history (3)
-
Olive Cotton, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 13 May 2000–02 Jul 2000.
Olive Cotton, National Library of Australia, 14 Jul 2000–08 Oct 2000.
Flatlands: Photography & Everyday Space, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 15 Sep 2012–03 Feb 2013.
