Margaret Worth

Margaret G. Worth (born 1944) is an Australian artist, who has worked as a painter, screen printer and sculptor. She studied music, pure and applied math and sciences before she turned to studies in art in 1962. Her art allowed her to seek to combine her wonder in science and spirituality. Her work is represented in the Australian national and state galleries, and in private collections in Australia and the United States.

Development as an artist Born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1944, Worth spent three years teaching before leaving to practice as an artist. From 1962 she studied at the South Australian School of Art where she was influenced by Dora Chapman, Geoff Wilson and Sydney Ball. Ball, an abstract painter who had recently returned from New York and would later become her husband.

In 1969 Worth moved with Ball to New York. There she studied at the School of Visual Arts with feminist theorist and curator Lucy Lippard and the sculptor Richard Serra.

While studying, Worth worked producing screen prints for artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Sol LeWitt and Jim Dines. After graduation from Columbia, she taught 3D Design at the Parsons School of Design, and drawing at Sarah Lawrence College, and Columbia-Greene Community College. and is now a resident of Victor Harbor, South Australia. Her first exhibition in Adelaide in the 1960s were of such paintings. The National Gallery of Australia holds two paintings and several prints from Worth's Samsara series that depicts her interpretation of the Sanskrit word which refers to the cycle of death and rebirth. The series includes bands of pure colour that move rhythmically and mysteriously across shaped canvases.

Sculpture Worth evolved into a sculptor and installation artist. In 1988 an exhibition showed 'Forest Fragment' works made by using a pruning saw to carve polystyrene, a petroleum product, and coloured them with acrylic paints.

Emerging media Cross-disciplinary works brought Margaret Worth together with Bridgette Minuzzo, Heather Frahn and Lorry Wedding to collaborate on the presentation or an integrated and immersive installation about sound, water and energy waves. It comprised moving image, sound, cymatic wave effects, performance and objects.

In Collections Examples of her work are held in the National Gallery of Australia; National Gallery Victoria; Art Gallery of South Australia; Art Gallery NSW; Queensland Art Gallery GOMA as well as the Cruthers Collection WA; Artbank, Australia; Columbia University, New York, USA; Flinders University SA; Curtin University, WA; Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery Vic., New England Regional Art Gallery NSW; Murray Bridge Regional Gallery SA; University of South Australia

Exhibitions Since 2004 Worth has appeared in 20 special projects and exhibitions.

Commissions and Permanent Installations

Awards

1996National & State Awards, Healthy Heart Local Govt. Best Specialist Project Perry Barr Farm, ‘Play Way’.1995National CEAD Award Community Environment Art & Design, National Sir Zelman Cowan Award, RAIA Award South Australia, BHP Award, Civic Trust Award South Australia Swallowcliffe Schools.