SYDNEY.- Hazelhurst Arts Centre opened a new exhibition in June highlighting the work of Marion Hall Best (1905-1988), Sydney’s pre-eminent interior designer of the 20th century. She was one of the first independent and most influential interior designers in Australia.

We are delighted to have an exhibition from Sydney Living Museums and this is another example of how Hazelhurst Arts Centre works collaboratively with other museums and galleries to bring outstanding exhibitions to the Sutherland Shire for people to enjoy said Sutherland Shire Mayor, Carmelo Pesce.

This exhibition colourfully charts the work of Marion Hall Best and displays original furniture, fabrics, furnishings and fashion over the four decades from the mid-1930s. We are thrilled to bring this vibrant exhibition to Hazelhurst Arts Centre as Marion Best was such an important designer, who many people will remember said Belinda Hanrahan, Director, Hazelhurst Arts Centre.

Described as electrifying, vital and avant-garde, Best’s interior decorating schemes were unashamedly modern at a time when other interior designers preferred a subdued palette 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. This exhibition comes from Sydney Living Museums which holds the largest collection of textiles, furnishings, ephemera and imagery relating to Best’s work, much of which will be on display in this exhibition showcasing her career. Her interiors vibrated with bold colours and patterns and a signature of her commissioned interiors was her vibrant glazed painted finishes on walls and ceilings.

Although she designed mostly private commissions, Best’s work was promoted more broadly through photographs and articles in popular magazines and newspapers, exhibition display rooms and in her two shops in Queen Street, Woollahra (1939–74) and Rowe Street, Sydney (1949–61).

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.

Sydney Living Museum’s Michael Lech, Curator of the exhibition said “Best’s ability to transform space through colour has rarely been matched. Her work, once seen, was seldom forgotten.”