Biography
Meg Rutherford (b. Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia 1932 - d. 2006) woked as a mother's help for a farming family in Australia in the early 1950s but went to study sculpture at National Art School, Sydney in 1955 under Lyndon Dadswell who invited her to assist him on the Newcastle, (Australia) War Memorial Cultural Centre commission, unveiled on 26 October 1957. Then Rutherford went to London where she studied at St Martin's School of Art before entering the Slade School of Fine Art. She married, having been introduced to her husband by the purchaser of her work that she exhibited at the RA Summer exhibition in 1961 and she settled in England for the rest of her life. As well as producing sculpture in 1960s, she worked as a restorer in an antiques shop and produced 78 books such as, The Beautiful Island (1969) and Myths and Legends of the South Seas, which she illustrated. She was also talented in spinning, knitting, glass blowing, leaded stained glass work, bead making, fretwork, modelling and photography. The Contemporary Art Society purchased the bronze abstract form Terrene (1961) from the Grosvenor Gallery at the exhibition 50 years of Sculpture in 1965 and donated it to the art gallery in Southend (now Beecroft). She also exhibited in the the Britain Today pavilion at the 1967 Expo in Monteal, Canada amongst luminaries such as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Kenneth Armitage, Eduardo Paolozzi, Lynn Chadwick, Kim Lim and Mark Ingram. A work of hers, Quartros (1960) was chosen for the touring exhibition Unpopular Culture: Grayson Perry selects from the Arts Council Collection, 1 May 2008 - 31 January 2010.
