Exhibition Opening I Olive Cotton and her contemporaries

Cowra Regional Art Gallery invites you to the opening of Olive Cotton and her contemporaries

Welcome to Country Aunty Esther Cutmore

Guest Speakers Shaune Lakin, National Gallery of Australia Senior Curator, Photography and Sally McInerney, Photographer

ADMISSION FREE

Exhibition Dates 14 March to 10 May 2026

Olive Cotton and her contemporaries is a luminous look at one of Australia’s greatest photographers and her international peers who shaped modernist vision.

Olive Cotton (1911‒2003) is now recognised as one of Australia’s most significant photographers, especially notable for her images that draw attention to the immersive qualities of photography. Cotton began taking photographs with a Kodak Box Brownie when she was 11, and by the early 1930s was an integral member of a vibrant creative community in Sydney that included her good friend (and later husband) Max Dupain. She spent the decade making some of the most innovative photographs in the history of Australian photography, which she published and exhibited during this period, including internationally.

For the first time, this exhibition brings together Cotton’s photographs and the work of her leading international peers. These include outstanding works from the national collection by key modernist photographers such as Dora Maar, Berenice Abbot, Lucia Moholy, Edward Weston, and Tina Modotti. These are some of the most celebrated figures in international photography, and provide a perfect context for appreciating Cotton’s great work

This is a National Gallery Touring Exhibition presented as part of the Bowness Family Foundation Photography Touring Program.

IMAGE Olive Cotton, The patterned road, 1938, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/ Canberra, purchased 1983