Study for 'Untitled'

Normana Wight was one of only three women artists included in the landmark 'The Field' exhibition of 1968 (NGV, AGNSW); this gouache is a preparatory study for the painting she exhibited ('Untitled' 1968, cat. 74). The painting was destroyed by the artist in the early 1970s.

Born in Melbourne in 1936, Normana Wight studied painting at RMIT (1954-57) and etching in London at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (1962-63). In 1964 she was teaching in Sydney and by the time of 'The Field' had exhibited in a solo show at Pinacotheca (Melbourne, 1967) and also at Central Street Gallery (Sydney, 1968). Between 1966-1980 she had eight solo exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney, as well as group exhibitions of the Print Council of Australia and Contemporary Art Society, and she lectured in printmaking at the University of Southern Queensland from 1981 - 1998. Her work is in the NGA, numerous state/ regional and university collections, and she now lives in Queensland.

Wight's work combined printmaking and painting techniques to create minimalist hard-edged works with shaped canvases, akin to those of many of her contemporaries who, influenced by the writings of Clement Greenberg, began creating highly refined works of reductive formalism, or 'post painterly abstraction' in the 1960s. 'The Field' presented these artists together in a forceful and unambiguous statement on a new Australian avant-garde that was international in its outlook and assertive of its centrality to contemporary Australian painting.