Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s

240 Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s 241 Olive Ashworth, Textile sample: Great Barrier Reef c.1956 OLIVE ASHWORTH Textile designer and entrepreneur Olive Ashworth made a lasting contribution to Queensland’s visual culture over a career spanning four decades. Born in Brisbane, Ashworth studied at Somerville House where she was taught by the painter and printmaker Enid Dickson. 1 After Ashworth’s father died, she moved to Melbourne with her mother who encouraged her to enrol in a commercial art course at the Art Training Institute. Ashworth excelled in the course and, after returning to Brisbane, completed it via correspondence. She subsequently managed the advertising department for the travel and food company Burns, Philp & Co. 2 In 1945, she launched Olive Ashworth Publicity Services, designing brochures for Australia’s burgeoning tourist industry focused on Surfers Paradise and the Great Barrier Reef. The Reef had long lured naturalists but was becoming increasingly popular as a holiday destination through books such as S Elliott Napier’s On the Barrier Reef: A Story of Australia’s Coral Wonderland (1928); TC Roughley’s Wonders of the Great Barrier Reef (1936); and Clem Christesen’s Queensland Journey: Official Guide of the Queensland Government Tourist Bureau (c.1939). While Ashworth visited Lindeman Island in 1939, it was her trip to Heron Island in the early 1950s that determined her subsequent career trajectory. Commissioned to produce a brochure for the resort, Ashworth was inspired by the underwater world she encountered and began making drawings she converted into repeat-pattern textile designs. Her textiles found a ready audience in Australia and overseas, with Stoddarts Fabrics Australia Ltd commissioning Ashworth to design Textile sample: Great Barrier Reef c.1956 on behalf of a Swedish textile mill. The fabric is one of 13 colourways produced, with the pattern proving popular in Europe and being sold worldwide. Notes 1 Anna Thurgood, ‘Olive Ashworth: 20th century Queensland design icon’, State Library of Queensland , 29 August 2023, <https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/olive-ashworth-20th- century-queensland-design-icon>, viewed December 2024. 2 Nadia Buick & Madeleine King, ‘The textile designs of Olive Ashworth: A unique Queensland style’, 24 June 2018, QAGOMA , <https://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/stories/the-textile- designs-of-olive-ashworth-a-unique-queensland-style>, viewed February 2025.