Visual Artist

Kathleen Shillam is considered Queensland’s most important post-war female sculptor—her work signifying a dramatic transition from the traditional aesthetic of early twentieth-century sculpture to a contemporary style that had gained momentum in the Australian art scene by the 1960s.

Born in 1916, Kathleen was the youngest of six children, and at the age of 11, her family emigrated to Australia and settled in Sandgate. Her father was an artist himself—an illustrator and amateur painter. In 1929, Kathleen was offered a scholarship to attend Brisbane Girls Grammar School, where she cultivated her innate talent and interest in drawing. After graduating, Kathleen studied at the Brisbane Central Technical College and, in 1935, shared a studio with fellow artists, and a man that would later become her husband and life-long artistic partner—Leonard Shillam.

At this time, Kathleen was working as a commercial artist in Brisbane and tried her hand at sculpture, forming abstract human figures carved and modelled from clay, wood and stone. In 1938, Kathleen moved to North Sydney, near Taronga Zoo, where she developed a fascination with animals that became the primary subject and motif throughout her career. Returning to Brisbane in 1939, Kathleen and Leonard married and purchased a house in Brighton which became their home and place of work for more than fifty years. Living by the coastline and bushland, Kathleen and Leonard both drew inspiration from the native wildlife and surrounds.

At this point, Brisbane only had one commercial art gallery—Moreton Galleries—and it was here that Kathleen and Leonard held their first joint exhibition in 1949. The exhibition primarily featured Kathleen’s works on paper, that incorporated pen and ink with wash and crayon, and dramatic watercolours punctured with washes of opaque white, several of which were landscape studies. But within two years Kathleen’s primary focus had returned to sculpture—simplified sandstone and wood carvings of animals and figures—sculptures that in the words of the artists, were ‘part of the earth’.

Following successful exhibitions at the Moreton Galleries Kathleen drew significant acclaim and in 1951, she won the LJ Harvey Memorial Prize for Drawing. In the same year, two of her sandstone works were exhibited in the Sydney Botanic Gardens, which was known to be the first outdoor exhibition of sculpture in Australia. By late 1954, Kathleen had been asked to exhibit at the Johnstone Gallery in Brisbane, where she showed glazed ceramic sculptures of animals in small-scale and continued to exhibit with Brian and Marjorie Johnstone until their gallery closed in 1972. Throughout this period, Kathleen became one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary sculptors, and notably, was one of the very few who was able to earn a living solely from art.

Between 1961 and 1964, Kathleen and Leonard travelled to Europe where Kathleen studied at the Florence Academy of Art and worked at the Royal College of Art foundry in London. It was here where she gained experience bronze casting while studying under the post-war British sculptor, Bernard Meadows.

Her sculpture Bull, 1965 comprising copper sheets and polyester resin, was acquired by the Queensland Art Gallery. In 1970, Kathleen became a founding member of the Society of Sculptors, Queensland where she held workshops, and exhibited as part of group exhibitions until 1987.

In 1985, Kathleen and Leonard were commissioned to produce Pelicans, a bronze sculpture on permanent display in the Watermall at the Queensland Art Gallery and is one of their most well-known artworks. In 1995, the Queensland Art Gallery held an important retrospective with the exhibition ‘Leonard and Kathleen Shillam: A Tribute’.