Rebecca Hossack
‘Standing together were three of the most remarkable women of our time: Germaine Greer, Her Majesty the Queen, and the beautiful gallery owner, champion of Aboriginal Art and other cultures, Rebecca Hossack.’
A.N. Wilson of the Evening Standard
Rebecca Hossack was born in Melbourne in 1955. She came to England in the early Eighties to study for the bar at Lincoln’s Inn, but abandoned the law for a career in Art. Having studied at Christies and worked at the Guggenheim in Venice, she set up her own gallery – in Windmill Street, Fitzrovia – in March 1988. (She signed the lease on the premises in October 1987, only three days before the great stock-market crash on ‘Black Monday’.
The gallery, despite the economic climate, not only survived, but thrived. It has gained a reputation both for championing Aboriginal and Non Western Art, and for exhibiting contemporary ‘Western’ artists of rare individual vision. The gallery’s on going success is a vindication of Hossack’s boldness, eye, energy and commitment.
Hossack opened a second space in 1991, and a sculpture garden at St James’s, Piccadilly the following year. She is now moving the main gallery to a new three-storey building at 2a Conway Street, off Fitzroy Square, while keeping a second space at 28 Charlotte Street.
‘It is easy to be overwhelmed by Rebecca Hossack...She is straight from a kabuki Morte Darthur – over six feet tall, dramatically swathed in black Issey Miyake pleats. She delights in making things happen – exhibitions, sculpture gardens, riverside events, reputations.’
John Walsh of the Independent.
Between 1993 and 1997 Rebecca Hossack served as the Australian cultural attaché in London. (Her ‘unworthy predecessor’ Sir Les Patterson saluted her as ‘one beaut sheila’.) She is on the board of LAPADA (the Association of Art and Antiques Dealers) and of Resurgence (the influential periodical of alternative thought). She writes regularly in the national press, and lectures internationally. She teaches a course on Aboriginal Art and Culture at Schumacher College in Devon. Her portrait was included in Australians, an exhibition of photographs by Polly Borland at the National Portrait Gallery (with an accompanying book) celebrating ‘the contributions of 55 famous Aussie “ex-pats”.’
Hossack is a dedicated campaigner on environmental issues. In 2006 she was elected as Councillor for the Bloomsbury Ward in Camden. Last year she ran in the New York Marathon, raising over £20,000 to plant trees in Central London.
