Joy Roggenkamp

Joy Roggenkamp (1928-1999) OAM - Wartime Pin-Ups

Just 17 years old, Joy Roggenkamp produced these sensational watercolour pin-ups, that caught the attention of American servicemen on leave in Brisbane during the Second World War.

Encouraged by her mother, Joy began displaying these playful, glamorous works for sale in a servicemen's canteen.

Roggenkamp's pin-ups would have seemed both familiar and novel to American servicemen - distinct in their hand-painted, intimate quality - original & tactile keepsakes - to be pinned up on walls, inside lockers, barracks and aircraft cockpits. 

Pin-ups existed alongside shifting ideas about women during the war. While men were overseas and women took on new roles, imagery like these pin-ups still tended to present them in idealised ways.

A Young Artist Finding Her Way

Joy Roggenkamp grew up in Toowong, a suburb of Brisbane, the youngest child of Oswald Roggenkamp, a pharmacist, and Vivienne Davies. Joy studied at Brisbane Technical College and under private tutors Percy Stanhope Hobday, Melville Hayson and Jon Molvig, joining the Royal Queensland Art Society’s Younger Artists’ Group and the Miya Studio.

In the late 1940s, she set up a small attic studio - named ‘Yallalla’ - with her brother Kenneth and their friend Peter Abraham.

That creative partnership quickly gained momentum. In April 1946, Joy and Kenneth held a joint exhibition at John Cooper’s Moreton Galleries. Later that year, they took their work north to Cairns, where their elder sister lived, expanding their audience beyond Brisbane.

In 1947, Roggenkamp met Sidney Nolan, who had recently moved from Melbourne to Brisbane, and would spend time sketching and painting with him in Cairns later that year.

From Pin-Ups to Recognition

Joy Roggenkamp went on to establish herself as a considered watercolourist and won a number of prizes for her works. She held exhibitions in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. She is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the State Galleries of Queensland and New South Wales and other major galleries and private collections.

In 1997 Joy was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in recognition for her own artistic talents and for the support she gave to her local community of artists.

Sources ...

All works from Accession 31723, Joy Roggenkamp works of art, State Library of Queensland

Artists profiles ...

Design & Art Australia Online:

• Joy Roggenkamp
• Kenneth Roggenkamp

QAGOMA:

• Joy Roggenkamp