With her husband, solicitor and businessman Ian Baillieu,[1] they purchased a small retail property in Ross Street, Toorak, which they renovated to open Realities gallery there in April 1971.
A catalogue of 35 pages, including 12 pages of plates, displayed works in the exhibition from Italian, Dutch and French schools from the 16th to 18th centuries, including Annibale Carracci's Head of a Boy Wearing a Flat Cap priced at $A12,500; Giovanni Battista Tiepolo with two drawings ($A7,000 and $A8,000); and Jacob Jordaens' The Martyrdom of St Sebastian ($A7,500), with others by Bonasone, Boschi, Busiri, Cipriani, Ferri, Garzi, Graziani, Martini, Novelli, and Pinelli.
[2] Realities attracted crowds of students and the general public and Baillieu expressed her delight in giving wide exposure to a broad range of the art that she showed, which included dolls,[5] weaving and electronics as well as the traditional media: “I like to produce exhibitions which have purpose.
[2][6] The major state galleries, especially those of Victoria and New South Wales which were glamorously re-housed, were collecting Australian works and receiving blockbuster exhibitions from overseas, and art was seen as a viable investment, with incentives provided by the culturally activist Whitlam government.
metres occupied by historic buildings; a schoolhouse (c.1867), parish hall (c.1912), verger’s cottage (1928) and a small ablutions block, and had them renovated and combined by architect Ross Ramus of Gunn Hayball Pty.
[16] Brigid Cole-Adams described the space in an April 1980 article on the occasion of Bailleu's departure; "It is housed in an old church covered in morning glory which once echoed to the dibbing and dobbing or small scouts.
Following her mother's death, in 1980 Baillieu sold the gallery to Pauline Wrobel for $365,000 (a value of $1,574,000 in 2019), and moved in 1981 to a studio house in Williamstown to paint full time,[28] becoming a finalist in the 1988 Archibald Prize with a controversial three-metre tall semi-abstract portrait of filmmaker Paul Cox which attracted further notoriety when it was cut and smeared by vandals.