Research Fellowship Project
November 2015 and March 2016
Project Title: Hand and Heart Shall Never Part: The Creative Collaboration of Linda Jackson and David McDiarmid
Dr Sally Gray’s research project relates to her exhibition of the same title, held at Wollongong City Gallery (2016-17). The exhibition and its accompanying publication explored the interdisciplinary art and fashion space inhabited by the two friends: David McDiarmid, artist, and Linda Jackson, fashion designer, as they worked to co-invent design ideas and co-create garments bearing the labels Linda Jackson Flamingo Park (1974-82) and Linda Jackson Bush Couture (1983-92). The exhibition title refers to a sentimental nineteenth century homily used by McDiarmid and to the romantic framing of creative relationships in the milieu they shared, first in Melbourne and then Sydney. The exhibition is part of a larger project that includes David McDiarmid: When This You See Remember Me (2014) at the National Gallery of Victoria, and a new book resulting from Gray’s 2010-12 Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship exploring fashion, art, decorative arts and sexual politics in Melbourne and Sydney in the 1970s and 80s. Gray’s fellowship at MAAS focused primarily on magazine and newspaper files in the Museum’s Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee Archives; the MAAS fashion collection, which holds significant work by Jackson and McDiarmid; and the MAAS Research Library.
Gray is a cultural historian, curator, Visiting Scholar in Cultural History at UNSW. Additionally, she is also Principal of Sally Gray and Company arts consultants. View Gray’s publications here.