The Margaret Preston Retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria is a Revelation

Self-portrait of Margaret Preston from 1930. Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney. © Margaret Preston/Licensed by Copyright Agency Australia. Image © Art Gallery of New South Wales. Cover picture of Issey Miyake SS27 in Paris. 

By Sasha Grishin

The National Gallery of Victoria’s Margaret Preston is a breathtaking exhibition. It is Preston as we have never seen her before, and challenges many earlier preconceptions.We see her work in the context of her students/lovers, Bessie Gibson and Gladys Reynell, and her obsession with First Nations art – her adaptations, her collections, and, now, commentaries on her adaptations by Trevor Nickolls and Gordon Bennett, among others.

A much more complex and nuanced image of Preston emerges than in previous exhibitions.

The show is a mixture of a chronological survey with her early still life paintings from the opening decade of the 20th century, then her decorative flower pieces moving to the magnificence of her hand-coloured woodcuts.

There is a desire to bring her art to life: we see her iconic Wheelflower print of 1929, next to the actual woodblock from which it was printed. Her First Nations pieces are shown together with their actual sources of inspiration.

The exhibition is full of these little detective pieces that save the exhibition from being just another Margaret Preston show to make it into the Margaret Preston show for our generation.

The vivid 'Coastal Gums' 

by Matgaret Preston, 1929. 

Private Collection

© Margaret Preston

Licensed by Copyright 

Agency, Australia

A spectacular makeover

Born Margaret Rose McPherson in Adelaide in 1875, she initially trained in Sydney, then at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. She spent many years travelling in Europe, mainly in Germany, France and England.

She first travelled with Betty Davidson and then Gladys Reynell, with both of whom, the NGV catalogue asserts, she had a romantic bond.

She exhibited to limited acclaim, first under the name of Rose McPherson and by 1912 as Margaret McPherson.

Her personal and artistic makeover was as spectacular as it was sudden.

On the last day of 1919, the 44-year-old McPherson falsified her age by eight years and married Lieutenant William George Preston, subsequently a successful businessman. This made her, at least on the marriage certificate, a socially respectable two years younger than her husband, rather than the embarrassing six years older.

She changed her exhibiting name to Margaret Preston and, armed with her husband’s wealth, launched her new career with a massive publicity blitz that was to last until her death in 1963.

Following her marriage, she settled with her husband in the bayside Sydney suburb of Mosman and moved rapidly up the social ladder to become a friend of the publisher Sydney Ure Smith.

Preston was the most articulate and outspoken female artist of her generation, writing frequent articles and giving lectures and interviews.

While always a committed traveller, after her marriage Preston embarked on numerous journeys throughout Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and Europe.

At the height of the Depression, the Prestons moved from Mosman to a 14-acre block in rural Berowra, before returning to the Mosman neighbourhood in 1939, where they remained until her death.

Thea Proctor's Tea Party, 1924 by Margaret

Preston. Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney

Purchased in 1942.© Margaret Preston 

A revelation

For me, a revelation of this exhibition is her late stencil pieces, including Christ turning the water into wine (1951) and White gum (1953) where Preston in her mature years is grappling with a host of conceptual problems and exhibits a brilliant technical inventiveness.

While many of the pieces have been seen before, here they gain a new poignancy through their new context.

With over 200 works on display, there is enough to present a comprehensive overview to gain a good understanding of her work and her contribution to Australian art and not an overkill requiring a packed lunch for viewing every print she ever made.

On ‘primative’ art

Although a strong advocate for First Nations art, I feel that Preston’s attitude still sat within the framework of cultural imperialism.

That is, it came from one who had not the slightest doubt in the superiority of her own culture that could absorb “primitive” elements from Indigenous cultures.

She illustrated how a sacred Kimberley dancing board could give you a suggestion for a curtain. In 1924 she boasted,

I have barely altered the design […] The Australian aboriginal has followed the usual abstract designs that are characteristic of the savage […] I have suggested a cushion cover that could be adapted from the design.

Aboriginal Still Life 1940, by Margaret Preston.

Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. Gift of the

Godfrey Rivers Trust through Miss Daphne 

Mayo, 1940. © Margaret Preston

In 1925 Preston wrote,

In wishing to rid myself of the mannerisms of a country other than my own, I have gone to the art of a people who have never seen or known anything different from themselves, and were accustomed to always use the same symbols to express themselves.

[…]

It is on the primitive natural forms that we must depend. In returning to primitive art it should be remembered that it is to be used as a starting point only for a renewal of growth, and a gradual selection must take place to arrive at the culmination.

Over the decades, Preston’s attitude to First Nations art matured as she travelled thousands of kilometres to view rock art and art in various communities. But the art remained a quarry from which a “civilized” artist could plunder elements from which to create an “authentic” Australian national art.

Preston’s ideas on a national art were naïve, but, as shown by this exhibition, she did create a powerful and memorable oeuvre.

Margaret Preston is at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia until January 31 2027.

Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University

Paris Fashion Week: Victoria Beckham Gives Fashion Something to Dance About as Sheer Dresses and Sculptural Tailoring Find Their Rhythm

The fluidity of one of Victoria Beckham's dance-inspired designs for the new SS27 collection shown in Paris at the gothic La Conciergerie. Cover picture of Issey Miyake by Filippo Fior.

For Spring/Summer 2027 at Paris Fashion Week, Victoria Beckham looks to the artistic revolution of the 1920s, when dance, painting and fashion began to challenge established ideas of form. At La Conciergerie, that influence emerged through sheer dresses, painterly prints, sculptural tailoring and a sophisticated play between weight and movement. The collection arrives at a pivotal moment for the house, following its first operating profit and the introduction of a new red lipstick. Story by Isabella Lancellotti 

Beckham's new red lipstick called Rouge

Victoria, was launched on the Paris runway.

THERE was something almost deliberately contradictory about Victoria Beckham choosing La Conciergerie for Spring/Summer 2027. Beneath the Gothic stone vaults of the former prison where Marie Antoinette spent her final days, Beckham presented a collection rooted not in historical costume, but in one of the great artistic ruptures of the twentieth century: the moment when dance began to break away from ballet’s prescribed vocabulary and seek a new language for the body.

The 1920s provide Beckham with more than a period reference. They were a moment when choreography, painting, music and fashion began to overlap in increasingly experimental ways. Dancers questioned the architecture of the classical body; artists questioned the boundaries of the canvas. Beckham translated that same curiosity into clothes, asking how much structure a garment can contain before the body begins to dictate its final form.

There is also a new maturity in the commercial acuity of the collection. Victoria Beckham’s business recorded its first operating profit in 2025, reaching £7.3 million, while revenue across fashion, leather goods, make-up and fragrance increased 15 per cent to £129.8 million. The achievement gives the collection a different context. Beckham is no longer establishing whether the fashion house can survive beyond its founder’s celebrity; the numbers indicate a business with increasing traction across several categories.

Beauty has become an integral part of that equation. The runway introduced Rouge Victoria in House Red, a new lipstick developed over two years. Applied to the majority of the 44 models, the matte-velvet red was deliberately striking against otherwise polished, natural complexions. Because the gesture was so simple, the saturated red mouth cut through the collection’s more nuanced palette.

Victoria Beckham’s business recorded its first operating profit, reaching £7.3 million, while revenue across fashion, leather goods, make-up and fragrance increased 15 per cent to £129.8 million

Hand-painted flowers and translucent

georgette created a delicate aesthetic.

The most evocative dresses were cut from translucent viscose georgette, their asymmetric, wavering lines creating an almost drawn quality around the figure. Tiny ball beads replaced conventional hems, giving the delicate fabric a counterweight. 

As the models walked, the beads pulled the dresses downwards while the sheer material responded upwards and outwards. The effect was less about decoration than physics: weight becoming part of the design.

Painting entered more directly through hand-painted flowers and kissing birds, motifs that recalled the extraordinary collaborations between choreographers and visual artists during the period. 

The Ballets Russes had already demonstrated how costume, set, painting and movement could become one visual language; Beckham approached the idea from a contemporary perspective, transferring painterly gestures onto dresses, knitwear and crêpe viscose rather than treating the 1920s as a source of retro imagery. Her own history with ballet makes the reference particularly pertinent. Yet there is no attempt to reproduce the stage. Instead, its influence is absorbed into a collection where line, weight, suspension and rhythm become design principles.

Elsewhere, coloured fragments taken from the backgrounds of 1920s portraiture appeared almost like pieces of canvas translated into cloth. Bows were threaded through dresses and knitwear as constructional devices, while pleats and tucks created garments whose forms seemed to be determined by the relationship between fabric and body.

Beauty has become an integral part of the label and the Paris runway introduced Rouge Victoria, a new lipstick developed over two years, applied to the majority of the 44 models

A starched cotton shirts and soft Nappa

suede bag made for a stylish look. 

The contradiction became more appararent in the more streamlined pieces. Starched-cotton shirts and mini dresses opened like paper fans around the figure, recalling the curious relationship between paper dolls and their clothes. Pleated geometric forms maintained their shape while leaving space for the body beneath. 

Trench coats folded into sculptural silhouettes suggestive of couture, yet were made from exceptionally light technical fabrics. Tailoring followed the same principle: elongated jackets, floating high waists and oversized trousers maintained Beckham’s precision without turning it into rigidity.

The accessories continued the modernist vocabulary. The new Fontana buckle divides Beckham’s familiar B into a lighter graphic form, while the oversized Sloane bag abandons stiffness for soft Nappa leather and suede that can be gathered beneath the arm. Flat bags take their cues from 1920s shapes, while sculptural wedges introduce another conversation between industrial construction and organic form.

What makes this collection interesting is therefore not simply its reference to dance, nor its polished commerciality. It is Beckham’s understanding that modernism was never merely an aesthetic. It was a way of reconsidering how things function. At La Conciergerie, she applied that principle to the wardrobe: how a hem can become a moving line, how a bow can alter construction, how weight can animate fabric, and how tailoring can retain authority without dominating the woman wearing it.

In that sense, Spring/Summer 2027 feels less like an exercise in looking backwards than a conversation with the artists who first questioned where one discipline ended and another began. Beckham has taken that century-old argument and brought it into her own precise, increasingly confident fashion language.

See the full collection below from Victoria Beckham's Spring/Summer 2027 Collection in Paris