'Standing together were three of the most remarkable women of our time: Germaine Greer, Her Majesty the Queen, and the beautiful gallery owner, promoter of Aboriginal Art and other cultures, wit and genius, Rebecca Hossack.'

 

-A.N Wilson of The Evening Standard

 

The Director of two galleries in central London and Miami, Rebecca Hossack was born in Melbourne in 1955. 

 

Following degrees in Law and in History of Art, Hossack studied at Christie's and at The Guggenheim in Venice. She set up her own gallery in Windmill Street, Fitzrovia, in March 1988. (She signed the lease only three days before the great stock-market crash on 'Black Monday').

 

Hossack's business, despite the economic climate, has not only survived, but thrived. In 2007 she moved the main London gallery to a three-storey building in 2a Conway Street, off Fitzroy Square, while keeping a second space at nearby 28 Charlotte Street.

 

From 1993-7, Hossack served as the Australian cultural attaché in London, initiating literary links between Australian and British writers and organising a series of exhibitions of Australian art in London. Her 'unworthy predecessor' Sir Les Patterson saluted her as 'one beaut sheila'. Hossack's portrait was included in Australians, an exhibition of photographs by Polly Borland at the National Portrait Gallery (with an accompanying book) celebrating 'the contributions of 55 famous Aussie "ex-pats".

 

Hossack is a trustee of Resurgence, the periodical of alternative thought. Hossack was the first Conservative Councillor in Bloomsbury for over 20 years, during which time she ran the New York Marathon to raise £20,000 to plant trees in central London. She also writes regularly in the national press and lectures internationally on Aboriginal art as part of NADFAS, the National Association of Decorative and Fine Art Societies, an international organisation with around 450 local societies and 80,000 members across the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. She has worked closely with the British Museum, the Barbican Centre, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Horniman Museum and the De Young Museum in San Francisco. Hossack also campaigns to preserve rock art in Western Australia’s Burrup peninsula. 

 

'It is easy to be overwhelmed by Rebecca Hossack...She is straight from a kabuki Morte Darthur - over six feet tall, dramatically swathed in black Issey Miyake pleats. She delights in making things happen - exhibitions, sculpture gardens, riverside events, reputations.'

 

- John Walsh of the Independent