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June Dally-Watkins2020

by Peter Kingston

Sydney artist Peter Kingston was a Pop artist in the 1970s and has been exhibiting his work in Sydney and New York since 1978. His latest artist book, Sheilas — a companion to his 2018 collection Gents — contains portraits of prominent women whom Kingston sees as strong and inspirational. The 31 portraits are linocut prints in Sakura inks on Iwaki Mulberry paper. Kingston constructed a custom-made wooden box to house his works and each portrait is accompanied by an anecdote or quotation related to its subject.Kingston’s work is held by major Australian galleries, libraries and museums, and in Belgium, Los Angeles and Tokyo.

Peter Kingston on June Dally-Watkins:

I met the very charming deportment queen June Dally Watkins in her flat in Old South Head Road a few months before she died in 2019. She was my hero. When her favourite model was discovered dead at the foot of the Gap at Watsons Bay under suspicious circumstances, June went from door to door with the girl’s photograph, establishing that the chief suspect had been sighted with the girl earlier in the day at the scene of the crime. June told me that when she was in Rome working as Audrey Hepburn’s understudy in the film Roman Holiday, Gregory Peck had taken her to see the famous ‘mouth of knowledge’ where they had their first kiss. He proposed marriage but June declined as she had to return to Australia to care for her aged mother.