Artist Sally Heinrich’s bold and colourful lino prints feature some of South Australia’s most famous faces, as well as lesser-known pioneers who have made their mark on the state’s history.
From Saint Mary MacKillop to former premier Don Dunstan, singer Paul Kelly, media personality Anne Wills and astronaut Andy Thomas, the story of each personality is brought to life through illustrations and, in some cases, text embedded within the whimsical and unique artworks.
Some of Heinrich’s prints, which were exhibited recently during the South Australian History Festival, have now been collated into a book titled Local Icons, published by Wakefield Press.
Heinrich, a writer and book illustrator, also creates everyday items such as tea towels and tote bags featuring her works of famous South Australians. To date, her biggest seller is a tea towel featuring the face of former prime minister Julia Gillard and including quotes from Gillard’s famous misogyny speech in Parliament in 2012.
Julia Gillard and part of her misogyny speech as depicted in a lino print by artist Sally Heinrich.
“I’ve sold hundreds of them,” Heinrich says. “I think it’s something about that speech that just really struck a chord with women. It was the 10th anniversary recently and it’s still so current.
“I found that my daughter Molly, who’s 26, and a lot of her friends know about Julia and know about that speech, and really admire her and look up to her. So it’s several generations of women that she’s inspired.”
Heinrich has illustrated more than 40 books as well as writing and illustrating her own picture books, novels and non-fiction books. Her commissioned artworks also include wine labels, a mural for the Singapore Zoo and other community art projects.
The 61-year-old artist first began producing the “Local Icons” for an exhibition in 2021 in response to the theme of “Weird Adelaide”.
“Weird Adelaide” was an article by writer and artist Barbara Hanrahan which was published in the Adelaide Review in 1988, outlining the “weirdness” of our state. Writer Tracy Crisp went on to write a number of articles in response to “Weird Adelaide”, and she then invited local artists to produce work around the theme for the 2021 exhibition.
Heinrich’s work featured former premier Don Dunstan wearing the famous pink shorts he was photographed in at Parliament House in 1972, creating a cultural moment in time.
Sally Heinrich’s illustration of Don Dunstan in his pink shorts.
“That exhibition was a great success, and I had a really good response to the prints,” Heinrich says. “So, then I just started thinking about who else I could do and the next one I did was Julia, and it just went from there.
“I just got really interested and started looking at the prominent South Australians, but then I discovered some lesser-known ones, as well.”
One of those lesser-known people was a “herbalist and healer” named Mahomet Allum, who was based in the state’s south-east in the 1940s and ’50s and who was “despised by the medical establishment”, Heinrich says.
“Yet, when he decided to go back to Afghanistan in 1953, his patients organised a petition to ask him to stay, with around 19,000 signatures,” she says. “I just think it’s extraordinary that a Muslim man in Adelaide back in the ’50s has a story like this.”
Other local icons in the book include Hall of Fame footballer Jack Oatey, children’s television character Humphrey B Bear, author Colin Thiele, and media personality Anne Wills.
Anne Wills makes a splash in yellow in Heinrich’s print.
Part of Heinrich’s inspiration for creating the lino prints is to counteract the notion that nothing of much significance happens in South Australia.
“I’ve lived in Adelaide for most of my life, but I have also lived in Sydney, Singapore and Darwin,” she says. “And in the eastern states there’s this perception that nothing interesting or worthwhile happens in South Australia. I was probably guilty of that myself when I was growing up. I thought that everything interesting and worthwhile went on somewhere else.
“So for a lot of my teenage years and early 20s, I was just desperate to get away and be anywhere but here. But through living away and travelling quite extensively, it’s really made me appreciate home and that sense of belonging and all the amazing people who have come from South Australia.”
One of her favourite people from Local Icons is Sir George Hubert Wilkins, who was born in Mount Bryan in the state’s mid-north in 1888 and whose life she says was like “a boy’s own adventure”.
“You would not believe it. He went in a submarine under the North Pole, he flew over the both the Arctic and the Antarctic, he was a pilot, an explorer, a war hero, a photographer.
“He has even had a species of wallaby named after him from his work as a naturalist. It just goes on and on and on. He’s just amazing and he was born in a little country town in South Australia and hardly anyone’s heard of him.”
Sir George Hubert Wilkins, who was born in Mount Bryan in SA’s mid-north in 1888.
Heinrich thinks her lino prints resonate with people because they all tell a story.
“I think it draws their stories out as well,” she says. “So when I show people the book and they flick through it, they’ll say, ‘I loved Humphrey when I was a kid’, and someone such as Colin Thiele is another one who a lot of South Australians have very fond memories of growing up with.
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“It elicits memories and stories from people, which I really love. I also love the stories that my artwork and the book prompts, and the interweaving threads that connect people and places.”
Heinrich is working on the next series of icons and says there will be an ex-governor and a representative from the drag or trans community.
“I’m really trying to get a cross-section of different people,” she says.
Local Icons by Sally Heinrich is available from Wakefield Press and local bookstores for RRP $29.95.
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