Author(s): TERRY DORROUGH

Art

" I want to produce work which is really strong and yet very delicate I want to express the female strength" This richly illustrated book tells of the exceptional career of Sydney artist Heather Dorrough. Born in London 1933, she trained in interior design at the Royal college of Art, and worked on major projects in London and New York before arriving in Australia In 1962. Over the next five decades Dorrough worked across an unusually broad range of creative projects spanning design, craft and art. With her first modernist textiles she was adopted into the craft movement, and took part in the formation of the Craft Councils of Australia and NSW. In the 1970s she developed her own techniques of machine embroidery, painting with dyes and the sculptural use of fabric, her work bridging the craft/art divide. With unswerving commitment to seeing her practice through the lens of her life, Dorrough made amongst the most admired feminist works of the 1980s, her textile self portraits, body casts and sculptural installations gaining her recognition in the contemporary art world. In later years she turned to painting and printmaking to capture the spirit of her home environment, the dark gleaming beauty of Dyarubbin/the Hawkesbury River. With an in depth biography by life partner, and some time collaborator, Terry Dorrough, a wealth of photographs, and analytical essays by arts writer/curators Anne Brennan, Peter Emmett, Julie Ewington and Christine France, this timely book explores the interconnections between Heather Dorrough's rich life and multi faceted practice, and makes a valuable contribution to Australia's cultural history.