Genus I, No.2.

Linking art, science, mathematics and spirituality, South Australian-born Margaret Worth created dynamic hard edge abstract paintings during the 1960s. Her evolutionary new form of painting encapsulated the optimistic spirit of discovery that defined the period. As the artist explained, ‘It was a time when theories in science about matter, time and space were undergoing fundamental changes. The new theories were thrilling, they marked the time and called for a new visual language’.

Genus I, No. 2, 1968, is the second of a series of modular paintings that evolved from Worth’s interest in the universal language of abstraction and mathematics. She presents colour and form as being one within a four-panel painting, which references a Möbius strip: a curious shape with one side and one edge in an infinite loop. Soon after completing this series, Worth undertook a fourteen-year residency in New York, where she was directly influenced by American Abstraction and the ideas of Lucy Lippard, Richard Serra, Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt. Today Worth continues to explore the energies of colour, form and movement through site-specific sound installations. 

Elle Freak, Associate Curator of Australian Paintings and Sculpture