Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith were born a year apart, in the antipodean autumns of 1893 and 1892 respectively. Beyond this fact their lives were very different.
One was a good cook; the other was not. One left Australia on the eve of the First World War and lived the rest of her life in Europe; the other lived for decades in the same house on the outskirts of Sydney. For one Paris and famous names; for the other the quiet life of a provincial suburb. One went off to find a life of art; the art of the other grew out of the life she lived. The bohemian and the spinster. They are like mirror images of each other, two sides of a coin.
'Stravinsky's Lunch' is both a continuation of Drusilla Modjeska's previous work and an exciting new departure. In telling the stories of these two extraordinary women, it asks how an artist finds a balance between her art, love and daily life.
