Celebrating South Australia’s century-long love affair with Art Deco – with a hint of mystery
From a seafaring tea set to a vintage motorcycle, David Roche Gallery has tapped the private collections of anonymous Art Deco-philes around Adelaide to mark the movement’s centenary in style.
Throughout 2025 there have been major exhibitions around the world marking the centenary of Art Deco, the international style in architecture, interiors, decorative arts and product design. Art Deco first emerged in Europe after 1910 and reached an apogee at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs and Industriels, presented in Paris in 1925. This vast high-end trade fair attracted 16 million visitors, with a catalogue of exhibitors filling twelve bound volumes. Today rare works from that original exposition are highly prized, with an iconic armchair by revered designer Eileen Gray selling in 2009 for $US28 million.
Art Deco, a contraction of arts decoratifs, was arguably the first lifestyle movement of 20th century modernity. At the time it was known simply as the ‘new style’ or ‘modern style’ (succeeding Art Nouveau), and the term ‘Art Deco’ was not used until 1966. It was a polymorphous movement, appearing with differing national inflections around the world. Its visual grammar was one of bold colour contrasts, streamlined, simplified and geometricised designs. The finely crafted decorative arts showcased at the Paris exposition in 1925 were intended for the elite few who could afford luxurious furnishings and accoutrements, but in the 1930s and 1940s the style was adapted for the retail market by department stores, disseminated through advertising graphics, and adopted by architects and designers of many aspects of the modern lifestyle – including tableware, lighting, apartment living, cinemas, skyscrapers, ocean liners and motoring.
In Adelaide we are fortunate to have the only Australian exhibition marking the centenary of the 1925 Paris Exposition, with Art Deco: A Modern Vision currently on display at the David Roche Gallery in North Adelaide. Through some clever planning and networking, the gallery’s director Robert Reason (formerly the Art Gallery of South Australia’s curator of decorative arts) and curator Timothy Roberts have quietly achieved a coup, pulling off an exhibition of the calibre one would expect to see at our state gallery. As regular visitors have come to expect of exhibitions at the David Roche Gallery, Art Deco is beautifully displayed, with restrained lighting illuminating pearlescent glass, gleaming chrome, and jewel-like bursts of colour, glowing against dark walls. Throughout a sequence of galleries there is enough glamour and refined luxury on display to entice even that fabled icon of the Art Deco style, the Hon. Phryne Fisher herself.
It is fascinating that this substantial exhibition of 186 objects from Europe and Australia in the 1920s and 1930s, is drawn entirely from Adelaide’s public and private collections. To augment loans from AGSA, Carrick Hill and the University of South Australia’s Architecture Museum, Reason and Roberts reached out to the Adelaide branch of Art Deco and Modernism Society of Australia, which in turn mobilised members to lend works from their private collections.
Regrettably for the nosey among us, the identity of nearly all the private lenders remains confidential, but Roberts is prepared to disclose that while there are a couple of quite substantial collections, there are also small specialist collectors in areas including fashion, cigarette cases and cosmetic compacts, glass and ceramics. Several exhibits have been lent from a large collection identified mysteriously only by a pseudonym, ‘the Rayald collection’.
This contrasts with the small collectors who have lent their prized tea sets, handed down by family members. For instance, a fine exemplar of the Art Deco style is a Royal Doulton ‘Tango’ tea and coffee set, which was purchased in instalments from Harris Scarf towards the future bride’s glory box. This formed part of a larger dinner service which is still in use today by her family.
"Several exhibits have been lent from a large collection identified mysteriously only by a pseudonym, ‘the Rayald collection’."
Art Deco: A Modern Vision is structured in three parts, with the first gallery themed around the 1925 Exposition in Paris, the second gallery focussed loosely on travel, and the final two galleries devoted to Art Deco in Adelaide. There are wall texts and detailed labels, but unfortunately no accompanying publication or room sheet listing exhibits. This is a shame as the amount of information on the labels would be more easily digested through an accessible printed or online publication.
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In an exhibition where there is such a wealth of exquisitely fabricated objets d’art inviting close attention, one of the highlights is surely the dazzling wall of glass adjacent to the entrance. Beautifully illuminated display cabinets house sixteen pieces of Lalique glass, and an equally impressive selection of Bohemia glass, most from Karl Palda Workshop, Czechoslovakia. There are smaller more intimate exhibits nearby, including the iconic Marcel Breuer chrome plated desk lamp, shown in the Paris Expo in 1925; an elegant panther table light in bronze and marble by Alexandre Kelety; and a lovely little bronze and ivory statuette, The squall, 1930, by Demetre Chiparus, of a fashionably dressed, windswept young woman bending into the elements.
The showstopper in the gallery devoted to travel is a rare, impeccably restored Ariel motorbike and sidecar. Other items on the travel theme are a portable gramophone, and a cube-shaped tea-set, 1936, designed to be stable on board the RMS Queen Mary ocean liner. This area also houses glorious hand-painted earthenware vases and tea sets by Enoch Boulton and Clarice Cliff, amongst others. The South Australian section begins with a room of plans by Adelaide architects for cinemas and memorials, before culminating in the final gallery themed loosely around the decorous tradition of afternoon tea.
Art Deco is yet another success for the David Roche Gallery, culminating a year of engaging and beautifully presented exhibitions. It should prove a perfect attraction over the summer, not only for connoisseurs of the decorative arts, but also for those amongst us who just love Art Deco and those stylised modern designs so characteristic of the era that have remained popular to the present day.
Art Deco: A Modern Vision continues at David Roche Gallery until January 31 2026