Conservation behind-the-scenes: Jocelyn Evans on Clarice Beckett

Join Jocelyn Evans from the National Gallery of Australia as she presents an engaging talk as part of ‘Clarice Beckett: Paintings from the National Collection’.

Beckett was among the most original artists of early twentieth-century Australia. Deeply sensitive to colour, light, and atmosphere, she painted the coastal life of south-east Naarm/Melbourne with an eye for the everyday and the fleeting.

This talk goes behind-the-scenes to explore the research and conservation work that brought this rarely seen collection of Clarice Beckett works to light. Discover how the National Gallery became the first public institution to acquire Beckett’s work, and how recent conservation efforts have made this intimate collection available to the public for the first time.

Jocelyn Evans is Paintings Conservator at the National Gallery of Australia and is the lead conservator for Clarice Beckett. Many paintings now presented in the exhibition had been in deep storage for an extended period, and required Jocelyn’s careful cleaning, consolidation and sensitive retouching before they could be shared with the Australian public through display and touring. Through her treatment of the Gallery’s paintings by Beckett Jocelyn has intimate knowledge of how Beckett painted and the materials she has chosen.