In 1925, Mayo returned to Brisbane in triumph. At the time, the city was experiencing a building boom and there were pleas to keep ‘our girl sculptress . . . constantly employed’. She was soon to create some of Brisbane’s grandest monuments, including the City Hall tympanum. In 1937, after a decade of great productivity, she travelled overseas to observe recent developments in art and, in 1940, she moved to Sydney.

As this exhibition shows, Mayo’s work was diverse in style, subject matter and medium, ranging from portrait busts to architectural ornaments; official commissions to creative, modernist experiments; and included ceramics, paintings, drawings and woodcarvings, as well as sculptures.

Though her work was varied, Daphne Mayo always maintained her commitment to craftsmanship and, even while experimenting with Modernism, never lost her interest in figurative sculpture. She regarded the human body as ‘a superlative piece of sculpture’ and her constant inspiration, defining ‘the mastery of human anatomy in simplified beautiful forms’ as her lifelong goal.