Barry Humphries AO (b.1934) created Mrs Edna Everage in 1955. Named after Humphries's first nanny, the Moonee Ponds housewife was launched in a sketch depicting the difficulties facing a Melbourne hostess in the reception of 'foreign visitors'. Humphries scathingly represented the particularity of the bourgeois Melbourne suburbs through Everage's painfully selfconscious language, drawing fine distinctions between terms such as 'sofa' and 'lounge' and 'garden' and 'yard'. Accordingly, he was at first unsure whether the character would translate to overseas audiences. However, over the years Everage's parochial vulgarity has found increasingly flamboyant international expression in shows such as Housewife, Super-star; Edna, the Spectacle; and Dame Edna the Royal Tour. Confusingly, Everage has recently acted in the role of Claire Otoms in the US TV series Ally McBeal.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2002
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
© Lewis Morley Archive LLC
Accession number: 2002.13
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Lewis Morley (49 portraits)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves: who we read, who we watch, who we listen to, who we cheer for, who we aspire to be, and who we'll never forget. The Companion is available to buy online and in the Portrait Gallery Store.
Magda Keaney speaks with Lewis Morley about his photographic career and the major retrospective of his work on display at the NPG.
The biographical exhibition of Barry Humphries was the first display of its kind at the National Portrait Gallery.
Bare: Degrees of undress celebrates the candid, contrived, natural, sexy, ironic, beautiful, and fascinating in Australian portraiture that shows a bit of skin.
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