1982
A Jenny Kee knitted jumper
Koala chic
This woollen knitted jumper was designed with a motif of a koala by Jenny Kee for sale in her Flamingo Park, Sydney, store. One of the jumpers was given to Diana, Princess of Wales. Kee made Australiana chic.
Kee was typical of many in her generation. In the 1960s she had the overwhelming sensation that life was elsewhere, and she migrated to London with the Oz crew – Martin Sharp, Richard Neville, Louise Ferrier, Philippe Mora and others. In 1972 Kee returned to Australia and was stunned by a new vocabulary in the arts. She opened a frock shop, Flamingo Park, in partnership with fellow designer Linda Jackson. Flamingo Park became synonymous with confident new Australiana.
The work that Kee and Jackson did was based on the Australian natural environment, taking the imagery of the bush and traditional Australian motifs such as the opal. Kee opted to use a lot of wool, in part because of its historical association, and drew on Australia’s cultural and natural landscape and Indigenous art to create a unique Australian aesthetic and fashion statement.
In 1974 Kee showed her first koala jumper, and Australian fauna became a continuing motif for her. The Sydney Daily Telegraph announced: ‘There’s a new Nationalism taking over the Australian fashion industry. Imported goods are strictly taboo on the fashion front. Now the industry is swinging to the tune of Advance Australia Fair and fashion-conscious shoppers are snapping up clothes that herald a true blue fashion.’
Kee’s garments changed the way heritage Australian issues were thought about domestically and internationally. In the years leading up to the 1970s, Australian artists of all genres had sought international acclaim by playing down their Australian characteristics and attempting to compete with the English and the Americans on their own terms. It was only in the 1970s and as a consequence of the Whitlam government that a significant number of artists began to wear their heritage proudly.
Part of Kee’s inspiration lay in reclaiming the icons of her childhood. One of her first designs was based on the cartoon character Blinky Bill. But the reclamation of Australian childhood wasn’t just central to Kee’s work: it was a very important step for modern Australia.
No one did more in this area than Martin Sharp. The Oz artist returned to Australia in 1969 and set up the Yellow House in Macleay Street, Potts Point, as an artist commune and gallery. Sharp’s 1960s work had been a unique take on psychedelia, with violent vortices of line and explosive ink. Once back in Australia he adopted a new iconography, drawing the characters of our collective childhood into the modern world: Boofhead, Ginger Meggs, Krazy Kat. And in 1973 Sharp, Richard Liney, Tim Lewis, Peter Kingston and others worked on the renovation of Luna Park in Sydney as a reclamation of a traditional Australian aesthetic.
One of the motifs that Sharp resurrected was Arthur Stace’s copperplate motto ‘Eternity’. The chalk artist had been long forgotten when Sharp began to incorporate his version of the motif in his work, and it led to a re-examination of Stace’s iconic copperplate graffiti – and the adoption of his catchcry as part of the fireworks on Sydney Harbour Bridge to celebrate the new millennium, and later the Sydney Olympic Games.
Redirecting attention to Australiana was further manifested in other artists in that circle, such as Cressida Campbell, whose work drew on earlier native artists like Margaret Preston. It then filtered out to the wider public through work such as that of Ken Done, whose sunshine-bright designs drew on the natural landscape, Australian light, beach culture and Sydney-centric motifs of the harbour. Trained as a painter and then in advertising, Done was the most popular designer of the early 1980s.
When Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, the people of New South Wales sent a gift of a pair of Kee’s koala and kangaroo motif jumpers, with animals on the front and a map of Australia on the back. Of all the gifts she received, Diana, the most stylish woman in the world, chose to wear the Kee knit. It put the map of Australia on the map, and was further seen as an early example of the princess defying tradition (pearls and a twin-set) in favour of the modern and the populist.
Artists like Kee created a new visual vocabulary and a new sensibility that was an important foundation in developing Australian culture.