This is the front face of the Harry P Gill Medal which is awarded annually to the student at the South Australian School of Art with the highest grade point average in the field of design.
It features Gill in academic dress as an Associate Member of the Royal College of Art (ARCA) London, a position he claimed after 1903.

Bookplate design by Lorraine Ellis, student at the Girls Central Art School, 1930s. From the Forerunner magazine, Vol III, October 1932, p 15.
University of South Australia Library.

The Director of Technical Art, Harry P Gill, with second year students training to be teachers in the Lecture Room,School of Design, Exhibition Building, North Terrace, 1905. Courtesy of the State Library of South Australia. SLSA: PRG 280/1/3/19.

Cover of a programme designed by Mary Packer Harris in 1935. The programme lists the speakers and their topics for the Art Extension Lectures series which were convened and presented by Harris at the Art Gallery of South Australia from March to October, 1935. SASA Archives.

The Antique Room @ School of
Design, 1892!!

Alice Hambidge, The Antique Room at the School of Design [Exhibition Building, North Terrace], 1892, watercolour, 40 x 36cm. The watercolour was exhibited at the 1893 Federal Exhibition organised by the South Australian Society of Arts and held in the SA Institute Building.

This watercolour was painted in 1892 by Alice Hambidge when she was a student at the School of Design. The School had moved from its home in the SA Institute Building in 1891 to rooms in the recently constructed (1887) Exhibition Building on North Terrace.

The work shows a class of women (note the hats!!) working at painting or drawing from plaster casts in the Antique Room of the School. The image [pIII]comes from Nancy Gemmell's 1995 biography of 'The Hambidge Sisters'. Nancy was the great niece of all three sisters: Alice, Helen and Millicent (Milly/Millie).

Records show that many of these casts were first imported from England by the inaugural Master at the School of Design, Charles Hill (1861 to 1881). Yet others were acquired by Harry Pelling Gill, Master of the School of Design (1882 to 1915) from various Australian sources, many of which it is reported, failed to arrive in South Australia intact. As can be seen in this watercolour, the casts in The Antique Room were of Roman or Greek classical sculptures or parts thereof.

Ivor Francis : Them Thar Associates

THEM THAR ASSOCIATES : Ivor Francis

When I accepted an invitation to open the recent Associates' exhibition and later discuss some of the exhibitors' work with them at a Critic's Evening, my memories went back to that famcus or, should I say, infamous Associates' exhibition of July, 1942.
It was an event for little ol' Adelaide to which you could have applied the description of a critic on a similar occasion in Paris nearly 70 years earlier when he wrote, "An exhibition has just opened at the Durand-Rue1 Gallery. The inoffensive passer-by, attracted by the posters which decorate the frontage, enters and a strange sight strikes his astonished eyes; five or six lunatics, one of them a woman-a collection of unfortunates tainted by the folly of ambition-have met here to exhibit their works. Yesterday, an unlucky individual, leaving the exhibition, was arrested. He had begun to bite the passers-by."

CLICK HERE, for the full article by Ivor Francis from Kalori.

New finds for the SASA History Project

This rather beautiful little watercolour was discovered in the May 1891 issue of The School of Design Art Club Magazine.This hand-written and illustrated magazine was published from 1889 to 1910 and contained original contributions from both staff and students of the School of Design. Issues of this magazine have recently been discovered in the Archives of the University of South Australia by Dr Jenny Aland, Adjunct Research Fellow to the SASA School of Art in her pursuit of material for the SASA History Project.

The work, which is by Lady Gwendoline Bragg (1871-1929) is included in a hand-written article by her husband Professor Bragg and titled 'A trip to Willunga'. The watercolour pictured above is signed 'GB'. Further digging into the historical records has revealed that Lady Bragg was born Gwendoline Todd in Adelaide (her father was Sir Charles Todd who was Postmaster-General and government astronomer) and studied at the Adelaide School of Design circa 1888.

Gwendoline married Professor Wiilliam Henry Bragg (1862-1942) in 1889 (later Sir William Bragg) who became President of the Royal Society and importantly a Nobel Prize winner who won, together with his son William Lawrence, the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1915. Both Gwendoline and her husband painted landscapes in watercolours which they exhibited at the SA Society of Arts. In 1896, 'their paintings were praised in the press and pronounced virtually indistinguishable'.

South Australian Institute Building
turns 150

The South Australian Institute Building was the first home of the South Australian School of Art - known then as the School of Design. The first Head of the School was Charles Hill, a trained engraver and artist who led the school for 20 years when in 1881, the administration of the school was moved from the SA Society of Arts to the Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery Board. The Institute Building still houses the Royal South Australian Society of Arts (RSASA) which is an institutional member of the Friends SASA. To see the program of exhibitions mounted at the RSASA Gallery, go to the Institutional Memberlinks section of this site.

SASA History Project resources

Several new items of interest have been added to the SASA History Project section of this site.

These additions include:

A response to a White Glove event by Dr Avis Smith.

A written and visual response to a White Glove Event by a third-year SASA student in glass, Kaz Pedersen.

A Bibliography for the South Australian School of Art's Stanley Street years: 1963 to 1978.

To access this new material, click on each link or go to the SASA History Project section of this site.

SASA History Project Reports

The SASA History Project is being led by Dr Pamela Zeplin who is Senior Lecturer, Portfolio Leader: Research Education (Art, Architecture & Design), University of South Australia. The following reports were prepared by Dr Zepin for the Friends of SASA AGM's and other events/publications relating to this important project.

SASA History Project Report, July / August 2011

SASA History Project Report, February 2011

SASA History Project Report, October 2010

SASA History Project Report August, 2010

SASA History Project Report 2009

a White Glove Event

This event, which forms part of the further development of the SASA History Project was held at the Art Gallery of South Australia on October 22nd, 2010. The event provided participants with the unique opportunity to view at first hand a wide selection of works on paper by staff and students of the South Australian School of Art (in its various incarnations).

These works were created during the School’s first hundred years from 1861 on North Terrace to the early 1960s when the school was on the brink of moving to its Stanley Street North Adelaide campus in July 1963.

The works were chosen for what they reveal about significant - and sometimes surprising - aspects of the School’s long, distinguished and diverse visual history and the quality of their execution over a century of changing South Australian culture. Until now, many of these works from the Art Gallery of South Australia have existed as ‘undiscovered treasures’, awaiting new audiences to challenge, intrigue, delight and inspire amidst different times and unfamiliar contexts.

Today, the stories embedded in this small but important sample of Australia’s artistic heritage remain open to a multitude of interpretations. In this way they are just as relevant, meaningful and redolent with possibility for audiences in the 21st century, and quietly affirm the significant role art schools still play within Australian society.