When Mirka Mora brought inspiration and impudence to East Gippsland

While locked up and dressing down during the pandemic, I have also been clearing out. I came across notes I made a few years ago, detailing East Gippsland’s involvement with the late great Mirka Mora, who died on August 27 two years ago.

Mora was born in France in 1928 and arrived in Australia in 1951, where she gradually became an artist, cultural figure and icon.

I first met Mirka, a woman of a certain age, when she arrived by bus in Bairnsdale in the mid-1990s, to conduct some of her workshops at Bairnsdale Adult Community Education, where I worked as a course programmer.

Mirka combined these workshops with the openings of three art exhibitions of the locally based naive art group, Contemporary Art Naive, begun by artist Gwen Clarke in 1992. Mirka inspired the artist who inspired the artists, you might say. In fact, Mirka supported three of these artists by purchasing their work. In 1996, she bought my wife Linden Dean’s Under suspicion, and around that time she also bought Julie Hollingsworth’s Voss and Yvonne Maddern’s Lovers on a park bench.

When Mirka arrived at a workshop, she quickly assessed the situation and then would orchestrate a bohemian, never-to-be-forgotten event. At one soul doll workshop, she stripped down to her cerulean blue bra then continued as if all the tutors taught like this.

Mirka began creating the soul dolls as drawings in three dimensions in 1970 when she felt lonely living by herself in St Kilda. In the workshops, the participants would draw an image of a person or creature. Mirka would make them cut it into pieces and move them around until they liked the new design. They would then draw the image on folded calico, cut it out, sew the edges, then stuff the doll and stitch the opening. They would complete the soft sculpture by painting it with gesso.

Mirka Mora (left) and Gwen Clarke at one of the Bairnsdale soul doll workshops.

There is a photo of her in which she has taken a slice of watermelon from lunch and held it in front of her at a provocative angle and height. Always one for an occasion, while opening CAN’s exhibition at the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre in Melbourne, Mirka stomped her way across the wooden floor, climbed onto a desk and gave her speech from there.

But through it all, Mirka taught in her own style about her own brand of art and the way she saw it. People followed her art trends. Her fashion trends simply left them talking: A grab bag of colours, like a palette.

After her workshops, Mirka would come to my home for drinks and dinner, forever the artist being “patron-ised”. First, she would take a nap, choosing our marital bed with views up Clifton Creek, where the actress’ energy was topped up for a further performance. Later, sitting on the balcony, gazing up the phthalo-green valley, she marvelled at the birdlife, just as she was inspired by the light and birds hovering over the Mitchell River opposite The Riversleigh hotel where we organised her accommodation.

We drank champagne and toasted (always) the success of her workshops. We never drank Veuve Cliquot because she never told us it was her favourite. Cooking for her was always an ordeal, knowing her experience in restaurants, and she didn’t fail to berate me for not heating the bread rolls. Helas!

A collection of soul dolls at Mirka Mora's Richmond studio, pictured earlier this year.Credit: Penny Stephens

While stirring a Thai sauce I heard Mirka ask some friends whether they had ever made love on a table. The woman’s answer was: “No, but Greig came at me from behind once while I was chopping onions.” The only way to deal with Mirka!

Listening to Mirka was fascinating and inspiring. Over dinner, she regaled us with her memories; her family’s close call with Auschwitz, when she and her mother evaded arrest by hiding in the forests of France for three years, was chilling. She told another story of how two women attending one of her Council for Adult Education workshops — the younger of them in her 50s — realised they were a mother and daughter who had been parted many years before. This inspired me to write a short story titled Ghost Limb.

She told us that at the parties at Grosvenor Chambers in 9 Collins Street in the ’50s and ’60s, the artists were so poor they used to sit on a mattress – the symbol of their artistic poverty. She said there was also a woman who attended these parties in a green tutu, but gave no reason. Mirka remembered the artists — figures such as Albert Tucker, Joy Hester and Arthur Boyd — gradually preferring to stand at the parties as they sold more paintings and became famous. She told us she cried as she realised a way of life was coming to an end.

Linden was moved to paint a picture (The Last Party) of Mirka on that mattress, which only gets a brief mention in her autobiography.

Reading Mirka’s autobiography Wicked but Virtuous: My Life was like listening to Mirka speak in that lilting English-as-a-second-language accent. She frequently lapsed into French words and phrases, including the wonderful “incroyable!”.

In 1996, we travelled to Melbourne for the launch of a book, From Angels With Love, by Christine Zavod, with artwork by Mirka. There we purchased one of the pieces, Love with all your heart. It hangs on our wall to this day.

Mirka Mora's inscription in Peter Millard and Linden Dean's copy of My Italian Heart by Guy Grossi, which she illustrated.

In later years, Mirka phoned me occasionally. Having endured cancer of the womb, she checked up on how I was travelling after my stem cell transplant. The letter to her womb at the end of her book is a poignant example of an artist using words to deal with trauma in life. She also asked after Gwen Clarke and “her girls” in the naive art group, even though Gwen had remarried and moved on four years before.

One day, a friend arrived with a copy of Guy Grossi’s cookbook, My Italian Heart, which contained drawings by Mirka. My friend had attended the launch and signing. When Mirka found out she was from Bairnsdale, she signed the book for Linden and me as a gift.

The last time I saw Mirka was a chance encounter in a bookshop at the intersection of Swanston and Bourke streets. She was sitting on the carpet in a remote corner of the shop, flicking through books. We had a quick catch-up then said farewell, never knowing that it would be the last time I would see her.

In the two years since Mirka’s death, she has been remembered by a memorial service at the Palais in St Kilda and an auction of the contents of her studio at Leonard Joel’s in March 2019. We were interested in bidding online for a small painted ceramic piece which was valued at $100, but in the end sold for just over $1000 — a testament to how much people were willing to pay for their own Mirka memory.

As she grew older, Mirka no longer made the demanding journey to Bairnsdale for workshops or exhibition openings, but she has left an enduring legacy with local artists who came into contact with her and attended her workshops, and were inspired.

Peter Millard is a freelance writer who lives in Bairnsdale, East Gippsland.