Canberra artist who created bushfire memorial Tess Horwitz dies

A statement from the ANU's School of Art and Design where she taught from 1991 to 2018 said she was a "much loved artist, teacher, colleague, mentor and friend".

She created the Bushfire Memorial at Mount Stromlo as well as working on numerous other projects in Canberra and beyond.

"Tess collaborated widely across the ACT arts community, working as a community artist," the ANU statement continued.

In 2021, she had an exhibition of drawings at the ANCA Gallery in Dickson.

It drew heavily on her reaction to the 2019-2020 bushfires and the smoke which enveloped Canberra. The exhibition titled Dusk was literally gloomy, reflecting an apocalyptical sense.

The Canberra Times art critic Sasha Grishin wrote of it: "The artist Tess Horwitz has been resident in Canberra for about 30 years - almost long enough to be called a local.

"After a certain hiatus while building a new studio, Horwitz has turned to drawing to produce a series of boldly expressive charcoal and charcoal and ink drawings that explore the artist's and her family's response to the events of 2020."

She herself told The Canberra Times about her own experience of the smoke of the fires which were then being superseded as a disaster by the very earliest stages of the pandemic: "We're all shut in the house, just trying to breathe with this appalling, surreal world around us.

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"I suppose there was that sense of grief-stricken - just grief-stricken at the horror that was happening with climate change, the destruction of nature, and also the fear for your children that this is the world they're now going to live in.

"So I decided to use the fact we were all together to start doing drawings of my family, the different members of my family, in this surreal world."

She said of the 2003 bushfire memorial: "There was overwhelming support for a memorial but a clear message resounded from the community that the work should not be a 'bronze statue plonked into a paddock' but a quiet peaceful place for reflection and memory with an emphasis on nature and the healing sound of water."

Accordingly, she and Tony Steel designed what she called "a journey from painful memory and the reality of the day of the fire through to recognition of the strength of community and shared experience and on to a very gradual sense of healing and regeneration."

Tess Horwitz moved to Canberra in 1990 and did a Master of Arts in sculpture at the ANU School of Arts.

She exhibited her work profusely. Some is held in the National Gallery of Australia where she also worked.

She coordinated large-scale community arts projects and received commissions for public artworks, including the fire memorial and the Bimberi Youth Justice Centre.

She said that from the age of 12, she had illustrated books and designed book covers, later working as a graphic designer on magazines. She painted portraits.

Before moving to Canberra, she trained at the University of Sydney and at East Sydney Technical College and the City Art Institute.

There is to be a commemoration of the life of Tess Horwitz at Brennan Street Park in Hackett on Saturday. The organisers say that it was the artist's wish that people wore bright colours.

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