Merioola Group

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The Merioola Group was a Sydney-based group of Australian artists active during the 1940s and early 1950s.

The group took its name from the colonial mansion cum boarding house of Merioola, in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra, managed from 1941 by Chica Lowe. Lowe consciously encouraged artists, dancers, writers and theatre people to take up residence, forming a popular artistic community in the immediate post-war years. Those connected with the visual arts included artist Donald Friend, Loudon Sainthill, (later to become one of the most prominent theatre designers of the twentieth century), Harry Tatlock Miller, (writer, critic and curator and subsequently the director of the Redfern Galleries, London), sculptor Arthur Fleischmann, artist and costume designer Edgar Ritchard, photographer Alec Murray, painters Justin O’Brien, Peter Kaiser, Roland Strasser and Mary Edwards, artist and later noted costume designer Jocelyn Rickards.

There was no 'movement' to Merioola, no manifesto, simply a post-war desire to celebrate life. Critic Robert Hughes describes their output as "charm at its simon-purest," but notes that their 1947 joint exhibition under the Merioola Group label, "threw into relief the already substantial friction between the Sydney and Melbourne art worlds," the former poetic, light-hearted, tending towards the frivolous and decorative, the second socially conscious and self-consciously avant-garde. (The group considered to exhibit in later years, with changing membership, under the label of 'Sydney Group').

By its ad-hoc nature the Merioola Group were destined not to last, and by the mid-1950s its original members had left or were on the point of leaving, most overseas. But while it lasted Merioola provided an invigorating bohemian atmosphere, described by its chronicler Christine France: "In post-war Sydney, Merioola was probably the most exciting place to live. Justin O’Brien said, ‘I’ve never laughed so much, not at people but with people.’ Merioola was always full of visitors; both local and overseas artists would call in [and] the mix of creative people at Merioola often led to interdisciplinary activities. The dancers would pose for [Arthur] Fleischmann or Alec Murray. The artists would make sets for theatrical activities. And Harry [Tatlock Miller] and Loudon [Sainthill] and Alec [Murray] would combine their talents as editor, designer and photographer for Ballet Rambert and Old Vic programs."