Two days after the news first broke,
the art world remains in deep shock at the death of the much admired sculptor
Bronwyn Oliver. There are many tributes today to an artist who, for all her achievements, was an intensely private
person.

Shunning the social circuit and opportunities for self promotion, the
47-year-old artist devoted almost all her life to creating work in her Haberfield
studio, where she was found dead earlier this week.

Sebastian Smee in The Oz gives
the best account of Oliver’s career and her art. Perhaps Virginia Trioli on the ABC’s 702 in Sydney should have spoken to
Smee yesterday instead of ringing her old home town of Melbourne to get an
expert’s opinion on a Sydney artist.

Trioli sought the opinion of Jason Smith, contemporary curator at the
National Gallery of Victoria, much to the annoyance of Sydney art critic and
lecturer Joanna Mendelssohn. “Does Trioli not have arts contacts in Sydney?” a miffed Mendelssohn wrote
in an email to Crikey. Mendelssohn, who lectures at Sydney’s College of Fine Arts, where Oliver was a
student, wrote:

It was a fairly bland, non-informative (interview), which left me
wondering why on earth Smith was asked his opinion. Oliver was very shy, very private. But she was extremely close to her
dealer, Roslyn Oxley, and was greatly admired by the curators at the
Art Gallery of New South Wales. Some of those who taught her are still
on staff at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW. She taught in the infants
school at Cranbrook and was greatly admired by her students, and former
students. There were many people available to discuss her life and work
on radio, and all of them were more appropriate than someone from the
NGV.