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The Beauty of Death: Leith Maguire and the Phaethon Series

Laura Barton
Write About Art 5
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“This is very ancient land, and its forms and its general psychology are so intriguing as compared to the other countries of the world that it in itself is surprising.”
                 Russell Drysdale (1960, quoted York, 1999)

In 2013, Queensland-born artist Leith Maguire was accepted into the prestigious Hill End residency, where renowned artists such as Russell Drysdale, Margaret Olley and Brett Whiteley spent time developing their art practices and drawing inspiration from the unique environment (Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, n.d.). Maguire followed in their illustrious footsteps when she spent one month at Hill End experimenting and refining her art-making techniques and processes in the stimulating surroundings. ‘Having the physical and mental space to really focus on making, to let go and experiment with different ways of working, was invaluable’, Maguire observes (Barton, 2013). 

Graduating from a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2007 and currently studying a Master of Cultural Materials Conservation (Maguire, n.d.), Maguire has always had a keen interest in art as a mode of expressing the cycle of life and death within nature. When she became aware of the residency opportunity at Hill End, she was eager to discover ‘why the village, the people and the landscape around the area had inspired such prolific creative output’ (Barton, 2013), and how they would change and inform her practice. 

Hill End’s inherent cyclic narrative of life, death and hardship that ‘stemmed from the boom and bust of the gold rush period’ (Barton, 2013), intrigued Maguire and served as a catalyst for her most recent body of work. Her ‘Phaethon’ series (2013), with imagery of malnourished, dying animals and barren, crawling landscapes, draws parallels to the... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Untitled 1 (Phaethon series), 2013. Ink on paper, 30 x 42cm. Photography by Matthew Stanton. Courtesy the artist and Jan Murphy Gallery.

Untitled 1 (Phaethon series), 2013. Ink on paper, 30 x 42cm. Photography by Matthew Stanton. Courtesy the artist and Jan Murphy Gallery.

<p><em>Untitled 5 (Phaethon series)</em>, 2013. Ink on paper,30 x 42cm. Photography by Matthew Stanton. Courtesy the artist and Jan Murphy Gallery.</p>

<p><em>Untitled 5 (Phaethon series)</em>, 2013. Ink on paper,30 x 42cm. Photography by Matthew Stanton. Courtesy the artist and Jan Murphy Gallery.</p>