Olleywood - Margaret Olley's Legacy

A view of the Tweed River from the deck - Mt Warning obscured by the pending storm

Last Sunday Jo and I took her dad for a drive to my home town, the 'place of many possums' (Murwillumbah), to visit my mother and also the new exhibit at the Tweed Regional Gallery.

In my opinion, the recently opened Margaret Olley Art Centre (MOAC) is the biggest thing to happen to Murwillumbah area since the that of The Bruce Chick Conservation Park at Stotts Island.

Margaret Olley spent a large chunk of her childhood living in the Tygalgah area just east of the main town. As a legacy to the people of Australia it was her vision to have three rooms of her Paddington, Sydney home packed up piece by piece (10,000 pieces in all), ashtray and cigarette butt by cigarette butt and relocated in Olley the artist working oder in a new wing of the Tweed Regional Gallery (http://artgallery.tweed.nsw.gov.au/MargaretOlleyArtCentre) where it sits perched high on the southern bank of the Tweed River looking humbly out towards Mt Warning.

Some people may find Olley's method of house keeping an acquired taste but I aspire to living in such a relaxed way where you would never need to search in a cupboard for anything, because it is already out in the open (if you could only remember where).

Open from Wednesday to Sunday, MOAC will let you look inside the muse that was a part of Olley's life for many years and give you some understanding of where and how her particular brand of still life was inspired from her heart to the canvas

Despite torrential rain the centre was packed to the rafters but the down pour clearly added to the visual inspiration and gavels all the opportunity to stay for coffee and lunch.