The exhibition title underscores Orval’s strength as a bold and innovative designer whose rich colour harmonies transform the buildings they embellish and their viewers’ appreciation of light as an immersive art form.

Drawing upon the Orval family collection, the exhibition presents significant works from Orval’s entire career—including his Dutch years—tracing the emergence of his Modernist style, with its vibrant simplified compositions and flattened, elongated forms, as well as the appearance of certain key themes, both religious and secular. The exhibition illuminates Orval as a master craftsman, focussing on the materials and techniques of his practice. Unpublished film footage captures him in action: working in his studio, designing cartoons, selecting colour combinations, shaping sheets of glass, and installing windows in situ.

Orval undertook many commissions for patrons across Victoria, and the exhibition contains studies and dramatic full-scale cartoons, including several for churches in Gippsland. While his stained glass for churches was sometimes circumscribed by religious traditions and donor demands, Orval steadfastly upheld a European Modernist aesthetic, modified for his new country.

Bringing together European and Australian modernists, this exhibition celebrates both Orval’s great achievement as an artist, and the multicultural integration that emerged mid-century from these new ideals, when the bleak war years gave rise to a time of extraordinary possibilities.

Curated by Dr Bronwyn Hughes OAM and Dr Alison Inglis AM