In ‘Sister Blackford Speaking’, Anne Marie Hall sketches a nurse. The work was drawn in 1976 when Hall’s then husband, Australian artist John Perceval, was committed to Larundel Mental Asylum on the outskirts of Melbourne. It is likely a portrait of one of his nurses, captured with a wicked eye. Hall draws the nurse’s fingers like wriggling worms and her expression slightly deranged.

Perceval lived at Larundel between 1974 and 1989; he and Hall divorced in 1981. While it closed in 1999, the asylum's building still stands, covered in graffiti, abandoned and rumoured to be haunted. The popular imagining of asylums does not always give care to their reality, turning what were oppressive institutions into gothic spectacles. For Hall, however, Larundel was a lived reality for better and worse.

Like Joy Hester and Mirka Mora, Hall forged a compelling female voice in an otherwise male dominated field. Now, collected by The National Gallery of Australia, the Ian Potter Museum and Geelong Gallery, her absence in the canon of Australian art is being redressed. For collectors of modern art, female artists or those interested in Melbourne’s history, ‘Sister Blackford Speaking’ will intrigue.

Anne Marie HALL (1945 - )
'Sister Blackford Speaking' 1976
Ink on paper
Image Size: 32 x 19 cm
Dimensions: 32 x 19 cm
Signed: Signed and dated lower image; titled top image.
Comes with Letter of Provenance
 
Condition: Very Good: Describes a work of art's image as Excellent, but may show some small signs of surrounding wear to paper or frame. There are no tears to paper margin or disruption to the paint surface.
 
(c) The Artist or Assignee