Tweed Regional Gallery celebrates career of influential interior designer

22 November 2018

Exhibition opens on Sydney’s pre-eminent designer of the 20th Century – Marion Hall Best

Tweed Regional Gallery will open a colourful, dynamic new exhibition on Friday 14 December celebrating the career of Marion Hall Best (1905–1988), one of the first independent and influential Australian interior designers.

“We are delighted to bring this vibrant exhibition from Sydney Living Museums to the Tweed,” said Tweed Regional Gallery Director Susi Muddiman OAM. “This exhibition colourfully charts the work of Marion Hall Best and will display original furniture, fabrics, furnishings and fashion covering four decades from the mid-1930s.”

Described as ‘electrifying’, ‘vital’ and ‘avant-garde’, Best’s interior decorating schemes were unashamedly modern at a time when other interior designers preferred subdued palettes and period furniture. She claimed that “gentle, soft colours … are not restful, but dreary, sapping the energy and the mind”; by contrast, “bright clear colours challenge the mind.” Her interior decorating style vibrated with colour through her signature glazed painted finishes on walls and ceilings.

“Best had a love of colour and an uncanny ability to use it to transform a room,” says Exhibition Curator Michael Lech. “Sydney Living Museums holds the largest collection of textiles, furnishings, ephemera and imagery relating to Best’s work, which will be on display in this exhibition showcasing her career.”

Best was inspired by the modernist movement and colour theory of artists of the interwar years. She is attributed with introducing international modernism to the Australian market through importing furniture and furnishings from all over the world including textiles by Marimekko, Jim Thompson Thai silks and Indian cottons, French wallpapers from Nobilis and Follot, furniture by Knoll, Herman Miller and Cassina, lighting from Flos and Iittala.

“Marion Hall Best: Interiors celebrates modernism in Australia and the renewed public interest in its bold, simple, aesthetic,” said Mark Goggin, Executive Director, Sydney Living Museums.

All are welcome to attend the opening celebrations of Marion Hall Best: Interiors on Friday 14 December. From 5.15pm, Exhibition Curator Michael Leach will preview the exhibition, providing an insight into Marion Hall Best’s life and career. At 6pm, Michael Leach will officially open the exhibition.

Throughout the duration of the exhibition, families are invited to drop in to the Gallery’s Marion Hall Best ART PLAY Atelier for colour and pattern play. Young designers can be inspired by Marion Hall Best in the interactive children’s space this summer.

Over the January school holidays, Tweed Regional Gallery will also be running a suite of special facilitated ART PLAY sessions and ART MAKER workshops. Check the Gallery website for a full list of events and details https://artgallery.tweed.nsw.gov.au/.

Presented by Tweed Regional Gallery, Marion Hall Best: Interiors is a travelling exhibition from Sydney Living Museums.

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Caption: ‘A room for Mary Quant’, display room designed by Marion Best, 1967. Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, Sydney Living Museums. Photo © Estate of Mary White