Conder Educ kit - Beverly Hills Intensive English Centre

THEME SOURCE SHEET:
The Machine Age
From her birth in the late 19th century to her death in the middle of
the 20th century Margaret Preston lived through times of great
change.
During this time Australian society experienced the rapid rise of a
modern consumer culture, which Preston often called the ‘machine
age’, where in both public and private life, new technologies
infiltrated everyday experience.
Nothing symbolised this age in Australia more than the building
and opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932. True to form,
Preston both celebrated and criticised this engineering feat through
participating in an exhibition dedicated to its opening, while
characterising it negatively in her writings as an ‘imported toy’.
Sydney, New South Wales, has built
for itself some of the finest specimens
of Meccano art in the world. One, a
great towering structure that sends
everything around it out of
perspective … Our Bridge … seems
to be the culmination of the worship
of ironbound realism that has ruled
the art of Australia generally … Here
in a country geographically and
climatically different to any other
country, and with its own national
characteristics, an imported toy is its
ideal
Margaret Preston on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, ‘Meccano as an
ideal’ Manuscripts No. 2 1932
Still Life 1927
She knows that the time has come to
express her surroundings in her work.
All around her in the simple domestic
life is machinery – patent ice chests
that need no ice, machinery does it;
irons heated by invisible heat;
washing-up machines; electric
sweepers and so on. They all
surround her and influence her mind
…
Margaret Preston, ‘From Eggs to Electrolux’, Art in Australia
December 1927
Bottom left: The Bridge from a ferryboat
c1932 Art Gallery of New South Wales
Left: Sydney today Photographer Eric
Riddler
Below: Sydney bridge c1932 Art Gallery of
New South Wales
Margaret Preston: art & life Education Kit Art Gallery of New South Wales SECTION 1 : 17