Yvette Coppersmith, Carnelian, 2023, installation view. Courtesy: the artist and Jewish Museum of Australia: Gandel Centre of Judaica, Melbourne.

Carnelian by Yvette Coppersmith is the Jewish Museum of Australia: Gandel Centre of Judaica’s inaugural Contemporary Australian Artist Commission. This exhibition provides an opportunity of interpretation and response their current exhibition CHAGALL and to Marc Chagall‘s story themes and practice.

“Carnelian presents various aspects of my practice linked through a thematic use of colour. The walls have been painted with a shade named ‘Carnelian’, like that of the walls of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg in the country of Marc Chagall’s birth, in what was then the Russian Empire. Russia was a home to pre-war Jewish life that was the nucleus for Chagall’s creative spirit.

Many of the works in the exhibition take inspiration from Bella Chagall, a writer, also wife and muse of Chagall, whose life was shaped by the struggle of women in the twentieth century to have an independent creative and professional existence. To Chagall, she was the embodiment of Jewish Russia, and throughout their exile remained a living connection for his creative life. Bella’s memoir Burning Lights creates an insight into this lost world.” — Yvette Coppersmith, 2023.

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