Eirene Mort was born in Sydney in 1879 and died in Bowral in 1977. She studied design in Sydney before travelling to London in 1899 to study for a career in the arts. Her arrival in London coincided with the popularity of the Arts and Craft movement.

The Arts and Craft movement, in sympathy with its members' aim of extolling the applied arts and their place in everyday life, had found a ready clientele in the homes of the moneyed classes in Britain. Freed from the constraints of the traditional art academy prescription of art being confined by the hierarchy of the arts, with oil paintings in the pre-eminent position, artists developed their talents across many disciplines. They worked in print making, ceramics, wood carving, jewellery, interior design, book illustration, furniture and textiles. Such a multitude of options provided artists with the means of making a living from their art. In the case of women artists this coincided with the time women were beginning to experience the freedom of living an independent life that did not always depend on the financial security of family or marriage. It did not mean it was an easy life for any artist, especially as women there were still mostly prejudiced against the single woman having a career. Mort never married.

The exhibition of the life and work of Mort at the Canberra Museum and Gallery provides a fascinating insight into this period of history. Mort was a talented artist but to survive she spread her talents widely and it is this breadth of her skills that the exhibition demonstrates so ably.

In 1903 Mort returned to Sydney with her close companion, fellow artist Nora Weston. In order to have a steady regular income Mort became a teacher of art at private schools, at home in her studio and then in a series of commercial studios she and Weston set up to cater to public interest in the applied arts. During all this time she continued to make a living from her art designs.

I know Mort's work from seeing her Australian bush alphabet blocks designed in 1903 that are held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. They testify to Mort's interest in and indeed championing of the use of Australian fauna and flora motifs in art along with a need to document Australian history through its architecture and her family history. It is these interests that became the key notes of her art practice.

Works of Mort in the exhibition that will be of special interest to Canberrans are the series of prints, drawings and watercolours she did of the Canberra region. In her later years she and Nora lived at Mittagong before finally retiring to Bowral in 1960. As a small girl Mort visited relatives such as the Campbell family at Duntroon and the Crace family on their property at Gungahlin. Some of the drawings and prints of early Canberra were published by Mort in a book called Old Canberra: A Sketchbook of the 1920s. The copy in the exhibition is on loan from the National Library of Australia.

Other artefacts and artworks come from family, friends and national institutions, including the bequest of a representative collection of Mort's art and ephemera given to the Canberra Museum and Gallery by the artist's family. The works and items on display testify to Mort's wide-ranging skills and encompass needlework designs, ceramics, pokerwork, book illustrations and book plates, illuminated certificates and even buttons.

I found this exhibition insightful because it displays the art practice of a woman artist at the turn of the century in Australia. Mort was the founder member of the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW in 1906 and was one of the organisers of the Australian Exhibition of Womens' Work in 1907, an important exhibition that validated the art practice and work of Australian women artists. Mort may have been more talented than most but her life was representative of a particular epoch in the early years of the 20th century where the craft and skills she mastered were valued.

Artists like Mort made and designed objects that found their way into middle-class homes not just the homes of the very wealthy. A lot of this work did not survive the vagaries of fashion. This is why this exhibition that brings together so much of Mort's surviving artworks is so valuable.