Skip to content

ClosedReopening 30 May 2025

Helen Maudsley

Outside and Inside | Looking down and the Shell, Looking up and into it, via the Crown. || Going from Outside to Inside, across the room, and into the Other Room, Going out into the Back Distance. || Outside, the figure 2 and the Circle, off into the Distance 2021

Helen Maudsley’s practice collates symbols, graphic imagery, and abstract forms to create a visual field of complex juxtapositions and hidden meanings. In her youth, Maudsley took private tuition with the artists James Quinn and Winifred McCubbin. She went on to study at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in the late 1940s. In the 1960s, Maudsley returned to study, undertaking a Graduate Diploma in Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts. Outside and Inside presents an interior scene, where abstracted domestic objects and iconographic signs are arranged to form a fragmented, disorienting assemblage. Described by Maudsley as ‘written thoughts’, the lengthy, poetic title ascribed to the work mirrors the analogies and ambiguities in her compositions. Here, and across her extensive body of work, Maudsley invites the viewer to decipher the intricate visual language that forms a unique interpretation of the world around her.

Artist / Maker
Helen Maudsley (1927)
Creation Date
2021
Place created
Australia - Melbourne
Collection
University Art Collection
Subjects
Art and Design - Paintings
Materials used
oil on canvas
Dimensions
(H x W x D)
71.5 x 71.5 cm Frame 73.8 x 73.8 x 4 cm
Credit line
The University of Melbourne Art Collection. Purchased, 2023
Accession number
2023.013.002
Copyright
© the artist
Request Access