23 June 2018 to 19 August 2018

_{Image: ‘A room for Mary Quant’, display room designed by Marion Best, 1967. Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, Sydney Living Museums. Photo © Estate of Mary White.}

Described as electrifying, vital and avant-garde, Best’s interior decorating schemes were unashamedly modern at a time when other interior designers preferred a subdued palette and period furniture. She claimed that “gentle, soft colours … are not restful, but dreary, sapping the energy and the mind”; by contrast, “bright clear colours challenge the mind.” Her interior decorating style vibrated with colour through her signature glazed painted finishes on walls and ceilings.

Best had a love of colour and an uncanny ability to use it to transform a room. This exhibition came from Sydney Living Museums which holds the largest collection of textiles, furnishings, ephemera and imagery relating to Best’s work, much of which was on display in the exhibition which showcased her career. Her interiors vibrated with bold colours and patterns and a signature of her commissioned interiors was her vibrant glazed painted finishes on walls and ceilings.

Although she designed mostly private commissions, Best’s work was promoted more broadly through photographs and articles in popular magazines and newspapers, exhibition display rooms and in her two shops in Queen Street, Woollahra (1939–74) and Rowe Street, Sydney (1949–61).

Best was inspired by the modernist movement and colour theory of artists of the interwar years. She is attributed with introducing international modernism to the Australian market through importing furniture and furnishings from all over the world including: textiles by Marimekko, Jim Thompson Thai silks and Indian cottons, French wallpapers from Nobilis and Follot, furniture by Knoll, Herman Miller and Cassina, lighting from Flos and Iittala.

Sydney Living Museum’s Michael Lech, Curator of the exhibition said “Best’s ability to transform space through colour has rarely been matched. Her work, once seen, was seldom forgotten.”

Marion Hall Best: Interiors celebrated modernism in Australia and the renewed public interest in its bold, simple, aesthetic.