Marcia Hines AM (b. 1953) sang in church choirs as a young girl in Boston, Massachusetts, and fulfilled her first solo engagement at the age of seven. At sixteen she auditioned successfully for a role in the Australian production of the musical Hair, and has lived in this country ever since. (Auditioning the same week, her cousin, Donna Summer, scored a role in the German production of Hair.) In 1972 Hines began a two-year stint as Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar – of Jamaican heritage, she was the first black actress in the world to play the part. Two years later she embarked on a successful solo singing career that produced such hits as ‘I Just Don’t Know What to do With Myself, ‘You’ and ‘Something’s Missing in My Life’ and saw her crowned Australia’s Queen of Pop in 1976, 1977 and 1978. Hines had a seven-year run as the kindest of the judges on television’s Australian Idol from 2003 to 2009. Her more than twenty albums include the recent Life (2007), Marcia Sings Tapestry (2010) and Amazing (2014). Inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2007, from 2015 she appeared to sensational effect in a hit fringe stage production, Velvet, which she co-created. Over 2018 she is performing with other big names from the Australian music scene of the 1970s in the APIA Good Times Tour.
Lewis Morley (1925–2013), photographer, was born in Hong Kong and went to the United Kingdom with his family at the end of World War II. He went to art school in London and spent time in Paris before taking up photography in 1954, initially working for magazines like Tatler and She. In 1961, he founded Lewis Morley Studios and built his reputation through photographs of the celebrities that defined the hip spirit of London in the 1960s, but is perhaps most famous for his 1963 image of call-girl and model, Christine Keeler, taken at the height of the Profumo Affair. In the early 1970s he emigrated to Australia, and went on to take many photographs for Dolly, POL, Belle and other publications. The National Portrait Gallery, London, held a retrospective of his work in 1989; and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra presented Lewis Morley: Myself and Eye, in 2003.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2003
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
© Lewis Morley Archive LLC
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.
Magda Keaney speaks with Lewis Morley about his photographic career and the major retrospective of his work on display at the NPG.
Celebrate the Gallery’s 20th birthday summer with Electric! Portraits that pop! The collection exhibition features a mix of bright, bold and colourful paintings, prints and photographs, and buoyant video portraits.
