Norma Redpath

Norma Redpath (20 November 192812 January 2013) was an Australian sculptor who worked in Italy and Melbourne.

Early life and education Norma Redpath was born on 20 November 1928.

She studied painting from 1942 to 1948 (with a long break due to illness) at the Swinburne Technical College in Hawthorn, and from 1949 to 1951 sculpture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, both in Melbourne. Her studies there were largely self-directed, as she found no contemporary sculpture of interest to her in Australia. ), where she exhibited, and was later vice-president.

Career

In 1952, she was teaching at the Korowa Anglican Girls' School and the Melbourne Technical College, and around this time also set up her first self-funded professional sculpture studio. ).

In 1962 she pursued her studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, northern Italy, where she would later make a base as she travelled frequently back and forth between Italy and Australia. Sculptures cast there formed the basis of her Gallery A exhibition in Melbourne the following year. One of the sculptures was awarded her second Mildara Prize for Sculpture in 1964, and in 1966 she won the Transfield Prize for Sculpture.

Redpath wrote in her diary in 1965, "To relate sculpture to architecture is a special problem and a great challenge, there is a need to retain the truth of a creative work of art at the same time relating it to special architectural needs..."

In 1968 she returned to Melbourne, establishing her second studio, in the inner-city suburb of Parkville, where she worked on a number of major commissions.

In 2006 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from her old college, now Swinburne University.