Born Dawn Frances Sloggett in Melbourne in 1932 Dawn Sime, later Westbrook, was a notable abstract painter who played a significant role in the expressionist movement in Melbourne during the late 1950s and 1960s. She studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1948, where she met and eventually married Ian Sime, another aspiring artist. She drew inspiration from British modernists like Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Ben Nicholson, developed an interest in Asian art, and first exhibited in 1954. The Simes became members of the Contemporary Art Society in the early 1950s and developed a distinctive style of surrealist-based biomorphic abstraction, which contrasted with the prevailing figurative expressionist painting style of the time. Teaming up with sculptors Julius Kane and Clifford Last, the Simes exhibited their artworks at Georges and Mirka Mora’s studio at Grosvenor Chambers, Collins Street. In an early foray into artist-run contemporary art spaces, Sime played a pivotal role in founding the Museum of Modern Art Australia, later known as the Heide Museum. She was included in a significant survey of Australian painting at the Tate Gallery in London in 1962. Following this exposure, she experienced increased sales and exhibition opportunities, solidifying her reputation and leading to her becoming an art teacher at the Fintona Girls’ School, despite having no formal teacher training. In the early 1960s her marriage to Ian Sime ended, which coincided with a temporary decline in her artistic success, a situation exacerbated by her marriage to Eric Westbrook, director of the National Gallery of Victoria which led to the perception that her art career was prejudiced while she was his wife. Sime persevered, maintaining her membership of the Contemporary Art Society and her art practice, exhibiting actively throughout the 1970s and into the early 1990s. In 1988, after Westbrook retired as NGV director, the couple relocated to Castlemaine 125km north of Melbourne. From 18 November in the year before her death in Castlemaine, her work was included with Inge King, Erica McGilchrist, Helen Maudsley, Mirka Mora, and Norma Redpath in an exhibition Another Look: Six Women Artists of the 1950s, at Heide Museum of Modern Art.
- Writers:
-
James McArdle
- Date written:
- 2023
- Last updated:
- 2023
