In her most personal work to date, third-generation gallerist and art curator Lily Mora explores the archives of her late grandmother, French-born Australian artist Mirka Mora, for a new show at the Heide Museum of Modern Art.
“Always Modern: Radical Nurture” looks at the pioneering artists who shaped Australian modernism, known as the Heide Circle. These artists were rebels united by a communal cause who gathered at Heide, a former dairy farm on the Yarra River flood plain at Bulleen owned by John and Sunday Reed, where they nurtured each other’s creativity and produced many of their most famous works.
Mirka Mora was part of this tight-knit bohemian circle in the 50s and 60s, scorning traditional domesticity in favor of a free-thinking way of life.
Decades later, it has drawn the interest of Mirka’s granddaughter, Lily.
“I wanted to look at the environment the artists created at Heide, and how those conditions led to the birth of Australian modernism,” she says.
The exhibition features more than 60 works from the Heide collection and the estate of Mirka Mora, who died in 2018, aged 90. It also brings together works by Charles Blackman, Joy Hester, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Sam Atyeo, and Danila Vassilieff.
Lily has a longstanding connection with Heide, first visiting as a baby with her late father William Mora, a renowned gallerist who died in 2023. (William Mora Galleries is now run by his wife Anna Mortley).
Her grandparents were regulars at Heide, too. When Mirka arrived in Australia with her husband Georges in 1951, the pair quickly became close to the Reeds, establishing a friendship that would last 30 years.
Lily has always been fascinated by the Reeds and the generous support they gave to the artists who gravitated to Heide.
“Discovering how radical they were in nurturing that community intrigues me to this day,” she says.
“Sometimes it was about collecting artists’ work, but other times they provided food and a place to stay for artists who they believed in. Sometimes they gave financial support, too.
“It was an incredible nurturing of artists who weren’t widely recognized, but they [John and Sunday Reed] had the vision and foresight and really believed in them, and gave them that incredible support in those pivotal years that we know as Australian modernism.”
Lily, now a mother herself, cherishes her childhood memories of her late grandmother.
Mirka was “completely wicked” and encouraged Lily and her brother “to be as naughty as possible”.
“She’d often take us to restaurants and would teach us pranks, like how to loosen the top of salt and pepper shakers discreetly, so that other people would completely ruin their meals by pouring salt all over it afterwards,” Lily says.
“I also have a lot of memories of being under the table with her and we’d tie people’s shoelaces together – she was playful and full of bad tricks like this.”
Mirka’s playfulness seeped into her art, too.
A loving grandmother and Holocaust survivor, Mirka was nevertheless resolutely non-conformist, making sure her grandchildren witnessed her at work and involving them in the process.
“One of the themes in the show looks at motherhood under the umbrella of care, which obviously was pertinent to my current situation and something I was naturally drawn to exploring,” Lily says.
“The idea of artist mothers and applying that lens to this exhibition was important to me.”
Works featuring Mirka’s cherub-like mother and baby motifs appear in “Always Modern: Radical Nurture,” a nod to the artist’s maternal side.
Lily says Mirka was fascinated by the mother-child connection and returned to it throughout her career.
“She spoke about her children being indistinguishable from her soul – she felt that they lived in her,” Lily says.
“It’s fair to say that Mirka wasn’t a conventional 1950s mother. She was quite unapologetic about her need to paint and prioritized that as a central part of her life and identity. I found that quite inspiring.
“She wanted her children to see her as a person first and a mother second, which I think is really radical for her time.”
At the time, Lily says, people weren’t ready to accept that a woman could be a loving mother and a successful artist.
“Those two [roles] were in tension, but she just didn’t subscribe to that and did manage to be both.”
Other works in “Radical Nurture” include Sidney Nolan’s “Head of Rimbaud,” an avant-garde work which challenged conservative art critics at the time, who claimed it resembled French cheese.
Also in the show is Charles Blackman’s introspective self-portrait and experimental cardboard cutouts, which were originally created to delight his children.
“They were meant to be little playful toys but Charles Blackman actually found working in cardboard to be quite an interesting medium,” Lily says.
While “Always Modern: Radical Nurture” celebrates avant-garde artists like Nolan and Blackman, it also centers friendships, maternal forces, and sisterly love.
“There are also a lot of drawings that Mirka gifted John and Sunday, lots of beautiful drawings of their summers spent together in Aspendale where they had beach houses side by side, and spent many Christmases and long summers there,” Lily says.
“[As the show demonstrates, they were] modern and radical but always full of joy and free-spirited acceptance of each other.”
“Always Modern: Radical Nurture” is at the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne until August 9.
