A Gathering of Friends – Deborah Halpern Exhibition

Celebrated Australian sculptor Deborah Halpern will take over Gullotti Galleries in Cottesloe this March, bringing her wildly colourful mosaic works to Perth for the first time in a show stopping exhibition titled ‘A Gathering of Friends’. Exhibiting from 3-22 March, Halpern has spent the last six months preparing the collection of both sculptures and works on paper, all of which exude joy and vitality.

A favourite work of the artist is a sculpture titled ‘Cleopatra’. The colourful piece has the head of a cat, the face of a human and the body of a bird. According to Halpern, “It might not look like Cleopatra, but it absolutely feels like Cleopatra to me.”

Internationally recognised for public sculptures, perhaps the most well knows of Halpern’s is ‘Angel’, commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and completed in 1989. The sculpture stood in front of the NGV for 17 years before moving to the Birrarung Marr on the banks of the Yarra River.
And ‘Ophelia’, a sculpture located on the river promenade at Southgate, beloved by the people of Melbourne, and once chosen to be ‘The Face of Melbourne’, represents the spirit of the city nationally and internationally.

Spontaneous in form, her creatures are painted in a style that recalls visions of Gaudi, Picasso and the playful surrealism of French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle, yet all have become distinctly Halpernesque in their ability to delight and surprise.