Using information in the extract on page 1 and your own interpretation, explain how Hanrahan has explored the relationship between her parents, in her series, Bob and Ronda. Ensure you use examples from the work to support your discussion. (5-6 sentences)


Barbara Hanrahan
Born in 1939 and died in 1991 in Adelaide, South Australia.
The strange mix of naïve and fantasy characterises Hanrahan’s prints. Her work has an intimacy, which draws the viewer increasingly into a macabre world, which Hanrahan creates. The intimacy is created through the use of decorative elements such as textured rugs and cloth, which give the viewer the impression that they are looking into a domestic scene. A familiar scene, which on closer inspection, is strange, haunting and fraught with danger. Her work has been described as ‘fairy-like and vulnerable’.

In 1963 she travelled to London. The trip was to become one of many. In London she worked at the central school and was influenced by the works of Gertude Hermes and the early pop art of Hockney and Peter Blake.

In the mid sixties Hanrahan produced a series of works which explored the nature of her parents' relationship. The series titled ‘Bob and Ronda’ explored the bond between her parents, a bond that she had not witnessed as her father had died when she was one. Barbara was their only child and was reared by her mother, who worked as a commercial artist.
Many of Hanrahans images play with themes from popular culture, especially pop songs. Her works have a strong narrative and often combine images of frivolity with a note of fear, pain and insecurity.

Barbara Hanrahan created a distinct and powerful body of work during her career, which spanned from the 1960s until her death in 1991. Trained as a printmaker in Adelaide and London, she lived between the two cities for much of her adult life. Both of these places exerted profound influence on her work; Hanrahan drew on the experiences of her childhood in Adelaide for much of her imagery, while the social upheavals of London in the 1960s, and artistic influences of the British Pop artists, formed her stylistic development. Using the expressive possibilities of the printmaking medium, she explored with an unflinching directness some of the most complex facets of female experience. Hanrahan’s prints delve into the fraught nature of intimate relationships between women; men and women; and women’s relationships with their own bodies. Returning to and re-working images created over several decades, Hanrahan treated these themes with a mixture of rawness and humour.