Margaret Worth


Margaret G. Worth is an Australian artist, who has worked as a painter, screen printer and sculptor. She studied music, pure and applied math and sciences before she turned to studies in art in 1962. Her art allowed her to seek to combine her wonder in science and spirituality. Her work is represented in the Australian national and state galleries, and in private collections in Australia and the United States.

Development as an artist

Born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1944, Worth spent three years teaching before leaving to practice as an artist. From 1962 she studied at the South Australian School of Art where she was influenced by Sydney Ball. Ball, an abstract painter who had recently returned from New York, would later become her husband.
In 1969 Worth moved with Ball to New York. There she studied at the School of Visual Arts with feminist theorist and curator Lucy Lippard and the sculptor Richard Serra. She attended the School of Visual Arts in 1969–70 and subsequently spent two years at Columbia University.
While studying, Worth worked producing screen prints for artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Sol LeWitt and Jim Dines. After graduation from Columbia, she taught art at the Parsons School of Design, Sarah Lawrence College, and Columbia-Greene Community College.
She returned to Adelaide in 1984 and is now a resident of Victor Harbor, South Australia.

Art works

Paintings

In the 1960s Worth was an abstract painter who worked in slabs and s-curves of bold and brilliant colours, on both flat and shaped canvases. Her first exhibition in Adelaide in the 1960s were of such paintings. The National Gallery of Australia holds a painting and several prints from Worth's Samsara series that depicts her interpretation of the Sanskrit word which refers to the cycle of death and rebirth. The series includes bands of pure colour that move rhythmically and mysteriously across shaped canvases. In 2020 three of the series were featured in the NGA's Know My Name National Art Event.

Sculpture

Worth evolved into a sculptor and installation artist. In 1988 an exhibition showed works made by welding a pruning saw to carve polystyrene, and dabbed fragments with acrylic paints. By the 1990s she was working with a variety of materials for both interior and outside sculptures.

Emerging media

Cross-disciplinary practitioners Margaret Worth, Bridgette Minuzzo, Heather Frahn and Lorry Wedding are collaborated on works to present an integrated and immersive experience of visual and aural properties in water. It comprised light, sound, cymatic wave effects, projection, performance and objects.

In Collections

Examples of her work are held in the National Gallery of Australian; National Gallery Victoria; Art Gallery of South Australia; Art Gallery NSW; Queensland Art Gallery GOMA as well as in Artbank, Australia; Columbia University, New York, USA; Flinders University SA; ; Curtin University, WA; Cruthers Collection WA; Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery Vic., New England Regional Art Gallery NSW; Murray Bridge Regional Gallery SA; University of South Australia

Exhibitions

Since 2004 Worth has appeared in 20 special projects and exhibitions. For Example:
2010 she participated in Drop the Dust exhibition for the South Australian Living Artists Festival in 2010.
2018 Worth won the Lorne VIC Sculpture Biennale The ‘Landfall’ Non-Acquisitive Award valued at $20,000 was awarded her work ‘VAJRASANA meditation’ 2018.
2020 Worth will be featured in the year long Know My Name program at the National Gallery of Australia.

Commissions and Permanent Installations

Her work is a permanent feature of "Sculpture Encounters — Granite Island", a sculpture walk on Granite Island at Victor Harbor.
Other public artworks include:
2008MAKING TRACKS + SWINGING TALES, Causeway and Foreshore Entrances, Port Augusta SA.
2003COLLECTING THOUGHTS, interactive sound work, Technology Park, Mawson Lakes SA
2003ON OCCUPIED TERRITORY, Victor Harbor, memorial to the meeting of Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin, Encounter Bay SA.
2002SALT WALL and solar powered ‘IRRIGATION FOUNTAIN’ art installations, Waikerie on R. Murray SA
1999THE ELEMENTS AT PLAY, Brighton Jetty, SA, light, wind and the waves create sound and visual art works.
1997TJIRBRUKI GATEWAY, Marion SA, a reconciliation project and event with on-going ceremonies.
1995ADELAIDE ARRIVE, art & Design Concept for air and rail entrances to Adelaide, includes bus shelters, pavement inlays, Mile End Wall.

Awards

Margaret has received numerous awards over the last two decades. Most recently, in July 2019 Worth was awarded the inaugural Government House Arts Residency in South Australia.