Margaret Dredge b. 1928

Also known as Margaret Vickery
  • Artist (Printmaker),
  • Artist (Painter)
Born in 1928, Margaret Dredge did not have the opportunity to study art until the mid 1950s when she started studying painting with Inez Hutchinson. Early paintings were figurative and still life works, leading into abstraction, she quickly became involved in the Melbourne art scene. Dredge died in 2001.

Painter and printmaker, born Margaret Vickery in 1928 in Murrumbeena, Victoria. Her mother died during childbirth in 1930 and Margaret was raised by her widowed father, William, a Gallipoli veteran. Between 1930 and 1940 they boarded in seventeen different households from Albert Park to South Yarra, mainly with elderly widows, before eventually settling in Sandringham. Margaret attended Sandringham State School until the age of twelve, then moved to the Methodist Ladies College in Kew, where she remained until the completion of her leaving certificate.

Even as a teenager Margaret was interested in studying art, and wanted to study at the National Gallery School. But her father insisted that academic studies were needed to increase the chances of secretarial work. This eventually led to her employment at the Commonwealth Bank where she met a young banker, Peter Dredge. Peter and Margaret married in 1950.

Margaret Dredge’s initial art training was with Inez Hutchinson in the mid 1950s. Dredge’s early paintings were figurative and still life works, but her output soon led into abstraction. In 1958 she joined the Beaumaris Art Group and began exhibiting in their group exhibitions. Soon after (1961) she joined the Contemporary Artists Society (CAS) and the Melbourne Contemporary Artists (MCA). At this time, as well as painting consistently, she became increasingly involved in the art world, becoming a Council Member of CAS, teaching at Beaumaris, holding life classes at her home and visiting galleries and exhibition openings.

1961-79 was an intense period of exhibition for Dredge, with numerous group and five solo shows. Her first solo exhibition was held at Peter Burrows Gallery in Queens Road, Melbourne, in 1964 and another at the Three Sisters Gallery in Brighton during the same year. She was commended in the 1970 Inez Hutchison Award; was the co-winner in the 1976 Shire of Flinders Art Award; and was awarded the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery 21st Exhibition Acquisitive prize of 1978. Her work was also attracting positive reviews – Graeme Sturgeon wrote of an exhibition of thirteen major works at Gryphon Gallery in 1979: “With this exhibition, Margaret Dredge has assumed a place among the top dozen women working in Melbourne” (The Australian, 3 April 1979).

It was following this period that Dredge virtually withdrew from exhibiting publicly. She continued working over the next twenty-two years, but only participated in group shows five times between 1980 and 1992 and not at all between 1992 and 2001. The reasons for this withdrawal were many, including the increasing commercial pressure to produce more of the same style of work. Her withdrawal can also be seen as a reaction against the assimilation of post-painterly abstraction into Australian art, which had been heralded by 'The Field’ exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1968. In the 1970s Dredge spoke of her desire to express “the human apart from the designer of pretty patterns of perfection”. While she had explored post-painterly abstraction in the 1970s with some critical success, she became more and more self-expressive in her paintings, particularly after switching to acrylics in 1973.

In 1980 the Dredges sold their suburban Sandringham home and shifted to the inner city area of Richmond. Dredge studied etching with Bill Young, Maggie May, Geoffrey Goldie and John Spooner, and in 1982 had a new studio built. From 1983 her output was more prolific, nine paintings in 1985 alone.

Dredge suffered her first heart attack in the late 1980s. She continued to work, however, and during the 1990s she completed a series of identically sized paintings. It was not until 1997 that her work came to a halt due to incapacitation from heart drugs.

Following the death of her husband, Peter, in March 2000, Dredge produced two major paintings – very lyrical abstractions incorporating almost calligraphic brush work – PJD Vale , dedicated to her husband, and Words .

Margaret Dredge died in September 2001.

Writers:
Dingle, Max
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011