La Dolce Vita | Margaret Kelly

  • Margaret Kelly, Entrance to the Metropolitana, Piazza di Spagna, Rome
  • Margaret Kelly, Antique Store, Via del Corso, Rome I
  • Margaret Kelly, Magnolia, Siena I
  • Margaret Kelly, Calle Colonne, Venice
  • Margaret Kelly, Antique Store, Via del Corso, Rome I
  • Margaret Kelly, Valentino, Piazza Mignanelli, Rome
  • Margaret Kelly, Graffitti on a Wall in Orte I
  • Margaret Kelly, Rooftop, Via Margutta, Rome
  • Margaret Kelly, Apologies to Giottino
  • Margaret Kelly, Apologies to Botticelli II
  • Margaret Kelly, Fresco on Wall, Spello II
  • Margaret Kelly, Magnolia, Siena II
  • Margaret Kelly, Graffitti on a Wall, Orte II
  • Margaret Kelly, Apologies to fra Filippo Lippi
  • Margaret Kelly, Apologies to Botticelli I
  • Margaret Kelly, Apologies to Piero di Cosimo
  • Margaret Kelly, Fresco on a Wall, Spello I

La Dolce Vita
2 - 22 April 2009


We see our place in the world through the filters of our culture, experience, values and expectations. The viewer sees suggestions of form in my works through the veils of collage, colour and texture.

In 2002 I travelled through Italy and was enchanted by its culture, people and golden light. It enticed me back in 2004 to live in Florence, near the Basilica di Santa Croce. Each day I walked to art classes past the Galleria degli Uffizi and through the Piazza della Signoria. I also travelled, finding the regional galleries and working with and learning from local artists inspired by both their history and contemporary culture. The country’s history is everywhere, walls rich with layer upon peeling layer of past centuries, many with no attempt at renovation or repair.

Living in Italy inspired me to produce two bodies of work which were shown simultaneously in galleries in Italy and Australia in 2005.

This exhibition, La Dolce Vita, is the result of my subsequent, and inevitable, return to Italy. I have added to my memories with photographs of textured walls, graffiti, mysterious alleyways and enticing doorways, with the maps that guided me through the narrow laneways where I lived, and with old burnt papers saved from a villa under restoration. I have used these, together with other public and more personal imagery, to evoke a place, an episode, or a moment in time.

Margaret Kelly