Frederika Kelly, a resident of Lapstone since 1983, died on July 7 from complications arising from a chronic illness. She is remembered as a person of quiet resolve, a respected teacher and artist, a devoted mother and grandmother and a loyal friend.
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As an artist, she exhibited under her maiden name, Rika Bendler, primarily at the Harrington Street Gallery Artist's Co-operative in Sydney, where she was a founding member. For some 20 years, she also attended the Blackheath Art Society life drawing group and frequently participated in BAS exhibitions.
A selection of her works from the past 40 years will be exhibited at the Harrington Street Gallery Chippendale from October 31 to November 26.
Frederika Bendler was born on September 4, 1945, in Gross Ottersleben Germany, near her father's family home of Kroppenstedt, southwest of Berlin.
At that time the region was under Russian occupation and the family moved to her mother's family home in Berlin.
Rika attended school in the Berlin suburb of Spandau until her family migrated to Australia in 1956.
Departing Germany from Bremerhaven on the MS-Skaubryn they travelled via the Suez Canal and Sri Lanka to Australia. The family lived in migrant hostels in Bonegilla, Victoria, and Villawood migrant camp in Sydney before her father, Hans Bendler, built his first home in Carramar.
Rika attended Birrong Girls High School and after gaining a teacher's college scholarship at the 1962 Leaving Certificate, she studied to become a high school art teacher at the Alexander Mackie College in Paddington. Her career with the Department of Education began at Ashcroft High in south-west Sydney.
She went on to positions at Randwick Girls High, Concord High, Rooty Hill High, Cranebrook High, Springwood High and Kingswood High School. She retired from teaching in 2005.
In about 1974 she began attending the John Ogburn School of Painting and Drawing in Harrington Street in Sydney's Rocks area. Rika became involved in the HSG Artists Co-operative and exhibited annually in the gallery from 1974 until 2017 in both small groups of two or more exhibitors as well as collective events.
She married in 1982 and moved with her husband to Lapstone.
For her students as for herself, art was an important means for personal expression. She found in the collective themes of the HSG and in her own life story opportunities for meaningful image-making. From the memories of ruins that she passed on her way to and from school in Berlin to more recent global conflicts, she developed images that conveyed her particular perspective on the human story.
In 2013 she returned to Berlin for the last time with her daughter Genevieve. From that experience emerged several paintings of a city with a troubled past. They are among the works to be exhibited in the memorial exhibition at the HSG.
Maintaining her connection to the German language was also important to her identity. Her reading included contemporary German writers and for a number of years Rika was secretary of the Blue Mountains German Australian Friendship group based in Springwood, where she enjoyed the company of many who had similar migrant experiences.
Rika intended her artworks to be objects of contemplation. She expected her paintings to be uplifting and not bore, provoke or burden the viewer.
