Barbara Hanrahan Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

The Barbara Hanrahan Fellowship for South Australian writers was established in Hanrahan’s memory in 1994 by her partner, Jo Steele. A street in Thebarton is named after her, and in 1997 a building at the University of South Australia’s City West campus was named to honour her memory.

Hanrahan exhibited her artwork internationally, including in London, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, Scotland, the United States and Canada. Her artwork is collected in numerous galleries in Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia. Her work Generations (1991) was used as the cover art for Mixed matches : interracial marriage in Australia, by June Duncan Owen.

Hanrahan’s work is personal and private yet its themes are universal, portraying relationships between girlfriends, women and men, and the struggle against societal structures. These themes are constantly repeated throughout her oeuvre in prints, such as in Wedding night (1977) and Dear Miss Ethel Barringer (1975). Both works depict Hanrahan’s unease with women’s roles in society, such as the juggling act in Dear Miss Ethel Barringer, of a woman having to play multiple roles at once, and her unease with society’s outdated values. By the 1960s many women were not virgins at the time of marriage, and Hanrahan’s Wedding Night depicts the outdated assumption that for consummation to happen the woman must be pure. Wedding night captures the moment of unease between the couple, with the lack of intimacy shown by the gap between them. “Wedding night has shocked people since its creation by its refutation of romance of the event,” writes Alison Carrol.

Hanrahan often combined writing with visual arts. She kept a diary in her late teenage years, and then again in London to make sense of a strange city. She began writing her first book, The Scent of Eucalyptus (1973), a semi-autobiographical consideration of her childhood in the 1940s and 1950s in Thebarton, shortly after the death of her grandmother in 1968. Her edited diaries were published in 1998, revealing less than favourable comments about many of her contemporaries, although some friends and colleagues commented that it was interesting to understand how Hanrahan’s brain worked.  A biography by Annette Marion Stewart was published in the same year.

In 1960, Hanrahan began printmaking,  working with her German lecturer and print master, Udo Sellbach. In 1961, Hanrahan won the Cornell Prize for painting. In 1962, she served as president of the South Australian Graphic Art Society. In 1963, at the age of 24, she left Adelaide to study at the Royal College of Art in London. She lived mostly in England until the early 1980s, with her partner, sculptor Jo Steele. Hanrahan also lectured for a time at the Falmouth in Cornwall and Portsmouth College of Art. During this time she returned periodically to Adelaide to teach at the South Australian School of Art and to organise her one-woman exhibitions, and she eventually returned there to live permanently. Her first exhibition was at the Contemporary Art Society Gallery in Adelaide in December 1964.

Hanrahan attended Thebarton Primary School and Thebarton Technical School. Hanrahan went on to study a diploma in art teaching from Adelaide Teachers’ College, while also taking classes at the South Australian School of Arts (1957-1960). In 1963, when Hanrahan was 23 she moved to London to take a break from teaching tertiary art in Adelaide. Hanrahan furthered her studies at the Central School of Art in London.

Barbara Janice Hanrahan (1939–1991) was an Australian artist, printmaker and writer whose work featured relationships, women, women’s issues and feminist ideology. Hanrahan was also known for her writings and short stories featuring coming of age stories that were somewhat biographical.

Barbara Hanrahan was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1939. After her father’s death at the age of 26 from tuberculosis in 1940, when Hanrahan was just a year old,  she lived with her mother (a commercial artist), her grandmother, and her great aunt (who had Down syndrome). This matriarchal household is often correctly thought of as the inspiration for much of Hanrahan’s art, as well as the suburb she was raised in, the inner-western Adelaide suburb of Thebarton. Her mother later remarried.