Margaret Olley and Sally Anderson: Ode

Ode: Margaret Olley and Sally Anderson is a celebration of important still life paintings by Margaret Olley (1923–2011) together with new work by Gadigal/Sydney-based artist Sally Anderson.

During her 2025 residency at the Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio, Anderson embarked on a new body of work that responds not only to Margaret Olley’s remarkable still life paintings featured in Ode: Margaret Olley and Sally Anderson, but also to selected objects from the re-creation of Olley’s home studio. Interweaving deeply personal experiences and themes of domesticity, care, maternity, and mortality within her work, Anderson invites us to reconsider Olley’s still life paintings in a new light.

Sally Anderson (b.1990), Still life with MO objects, Rosie orchid, GM orchid, after Olley for Francis 2025. acrylic on canvas, 168 x 137 cm. Image courtesy the artist, © The artist