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Marie McMahon

Australian artist (born 1953)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ98141651
Source-derived summary

Marie Elizabeth Rita McMahon (born September 1953) is an Australian artist, known for her paintings, prints, posters, drawings, and design work. Born in Melbourne, she has worked in various communities of Australian Aboriginal people and as of 2020 works in Sydney. Her work has focused on social, political, and environmental issues. Her posters about Aboriginal rights and Aboriginal life appear in major gallery collections in Australia.

Biography

McMahon was born in Melbourne, Australia, in September 1953. She grew up on Australian Air Force bases in Darwin, Australia, at Richmond near Sydney, and at HMAS Albatross, a naval base on the South Coast of New South Wales. During the 1960s her family lived in the Philippines until they returned to Sydney.

In 1976, McMahon joined the Earthworks Poster Collective at the Tin Sheds Art Workshop located on the campus of the University of Sydney. While working there she contributed to a catalogue of posters that "were sometimes didactic and often provocative".

Recruited with other screen printers by the Aboriginal Arts Board, in 1980 she went to the Northern Territory to work at Tiwi Designs.

Editorial summary

“Marie McMahon” enters the record as australian artist (born 1953). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Marie, McMahon and Australian can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1953, 2020, 1976, 1980—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1953-09-11. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Marie, McMahon and Australian.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Marie McMahon” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Marie, McMahon and Australian provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q98141651. VIAF identifies the subject as 54484706. The Library of Congress control number is nb2006020212. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 2020, 1976 and 1980.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Marie McMahon”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Marie McMahon primary sources, Marie McMahon archive and Marie research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Marie McMahon”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Marie McMahon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.