Objects of Substance - Giddy and Guileless Grammar Girls Acr

1966 Artist Mary-Jane Hickey from the Doreen Thomas Album Collection.

Mary- Jane Hickey’s 1966 sketch shows the overburdened Grammar Girl: academic demands in the maths book, encyclopedia, sporting commitments with tennis racquet, balls and golf clubs, not to mention personal needs as seen in the hairbrush, hand lotion and an apple to keep hunger at bay. Other students and bits of uniform appear to spill out of oversize ports and perhaps for the first time we come across the new style of bag for sports regalia, a precursor of current general school bags, with the school logo clearly visible. In her 1972 sketch, Mary Williams’ (1974) 1972 again speaks to the hard study habits of the Grammar Girl: concentration over the desk, notes discarded around her, and even the cat is tired out and now sleeping on a pile of books.