National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | Home Sweet Home

PF: Gina, in terms of artists who have joined the collection, or joined the family, or whatever it might be, is certainly the last at the end of a long line. Somebody had rung me; an artist friend of mine who had judged a competition, and hadn’t awarded Gina the main prize, but had rung me to say ‘You should get out there; there’s something there that’s you’. And I went to an enormously large… I think nearly six hundred works in this exhibition held at the Casula Powerhouse, and I walked into the space and bang! There was this poppy piece; luminous, large, crying out amongst this host of landscapes, and personal dilemmas, and dioramas… and here was this piece that was just so lovingly beautiful. Yes, they were poppies, but they were something else. They were just so much an elemental flower, without being anything. They were quite magical; I mean, I really didn’t respond to them as poppies, but they were just as if you had stepped into some Arcadian field, and the Gods and the pan pipes were all there, and I