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Vogue Australia
March cover star Gemma Ward welcomes us into her world
JESSICA MONTAGUE
8 MAR 2021
Gemma Ward's latest wanderings — delving into a creative inner life — have seen her flourish in a whole new way, reminding us that creativity is a place without boundaries. Photographed by Derek Henderson. Styled by Jillian Davison.
Gemma ward experienced a rare flash of deja vu during her recent shoot with Vogue – a jolt of energy and excitement that hasn’t happened on set for quite a few years, let alone on Australian soil. The team of creatives, spearheaded by stylist Jillian Davison, gelled so exceptionally in its vision that it instantly transported the 33-year-old back to the mid-2000s, when she was at the height of her modelling career and hailed as the face of her generation.
“It reminded me a lot of the shoots I did back in the day overseas, when photographers really got to unleash their creativity,” she says, recalling past work with Steven Meisel, Craig McDean and Mario Sorrenti, as well as stylists Lucinda Chambers and Edward Enninful.
“There’s something really special about being on a shoot where you know someone is dying to get creative and finally is able to let loose. There’s an energy and you can tell everyone is doing it for love, not money. You realise you’re doing something that has some kind of art and love and passion behind it.”
While Ward has acted as the ultimate chameleon for the biggest designers and stylists in her career, we’ve become accustomed in more recent years to seeing her in shoots and campaigns that play into her Earth Mother persona, all chic muted palettes in natural textures, or completely pared-back and raw.
But for an issue that celebrates the power of creativity and heralds the new spring/summer ’21 season, Davison chose to assemble a crew that would collide in a cacophony of colour.
“We wanted to bring a sense of wonder and optimism,” she says, “dreaming and creating in our own backyard, but to also play and explore a hyper-world of colour and bold print from the new season.”
Davison and photographer Derek Henderson captured Ward against the dramatic backdrop of the model’s adopted home town of Byron Bay in New South Wales.
The brilliantly patchworked fabrics produced by young Sydney artist and designer Jordan Gogos paired perfectly with both the bold fashion looks and Ward’s freshly dyed fairy-floss hair, as well as the other star of the day: a high-crowned Bona Capello blue bowler hat, created specially by Japanese- based Australian milliner Thom O’Brien.
But it wasn’t just the feeling of nostalgia Ward walked away with. The creative buzz got her thinking about the purpose and meaning of art as we forge deeper into 2021. “I grew up in a very artistic household and I’ve always believed in the power of art and the healing power of composition and colour,” she says, reflecting on her three siblings and their creative upbringing.
“I do hope we see more of that going forward – creating for the sake of creating and eating for the sake of creating art, something that is uplifting or makes you think or even just for the sake of being modern. It’s something I think the world needs, even if it doesn’t have a specific monetary goal. Otherwise we tend to see the same things and it can fall into a trap of being all about selling or being commercial and then it loses its soul a little bit.”
Ward’s sentences are calm and languid, yet carefully considered as they leave her lips. Artistic expression and its impact have clearly been on her mind in recent months, which may come as a surprise. She gave birth to daughter Kirra, her third child, last June, and spent much of 2020 adjusting to life as the mother of three, with eldest daughter Naia, now seven, and son Jett, four.
“It feels like you do need everything to work like a well-oiled machine,” she says shifting gears to describe the juggle. “The night-time routine and morning routine is always set... it takes a whole other level of scheduling and organisation just to give some time to yourself.”
But in addition to regular exercise (Ward has built a boxing ring at the back of her property for morning workouts with friends), she has been actively carving out time to nourish her own creative side alongside parenting. While Ward has dabbled with acting and still takes auditions, her future is now more fixed on writing for screen, having completed a course at the Australian Film Television and Radio School in 2013.
“I have three projects: two screenplays and one maybe-novel that could probably be a screenplay, too,” she reveals. “It’s another form of [maintaining] mental health for me. It helps me seek out my views on different themes and recurring issues I might have in my life.” Of the new batch, one project is a comedy mined from motherhood, while there’s also a darker narrative that “brings more of my experiences through being a young model,” Ward says cryptically, without revealing any more.
While she says there are no strict deadlines, writing hones her focus “because I can puzzle things out for myself that maybe I’m still trying to figure out ... I’ve always wanted to write essays or short stories as well, but I get very shy with that type of stuff. But I’m getting bolder and bolder every day, so one day it’ll all come out.”
Like many, Ward found solace in not just exploring her own artistic practices during Covid, but by seeking out meaningful reference points, too. “Something that has been an overarching theme of my life has been a love for art and not losing sight of what you want your life to be about,” she offers. “The times where I’ve felt really depressed or I’ve lost some kind of direction, I’ve always tended to turn towards novels, films, things that I feel tell a really classic story and suddenly I feel like that’s what I want to be part of – telling something timeless and being able to connect more with the humanity that people can relate to in all of the world.”
“I think once you lock in on art and the way we can all connect through storytelling then, I don’t know,” Ward pauses. “I found friends or something that I could relate to and then it made me feel less alone.”
“It took me a long time to get to that place but going through the jungle of the times that I’ve felt like I’ve struggled, that’s what has come out of it. That knowledge has become kind of an anchor for me,” she adds. “So now I’m feeling, with that direction, it’s easier to deal with things and you have to have some perspective and know that life is long and there are seasons of your life, too.”
Ward speaks of the season she’s currently in, having created an idyllic existence for her brood in Byron. Her humble day-to-day activities include ocean swims, slow walks, or taking the kids to explore a nearby lake. It’s the sort of mind-clearing routine that many who made the exodus to the northern New South Wales region during Covid were craving – a slower and more meaningful existence focused on connection, both to each other and the natural environment.
While Ward had the means and global knowledge to raise her children literally anywhere in the world, she chose to return home after a visit from New York when Naia was still young.
“We came back here for a winter in 2015 ,” she recalls. “We lived with friends for three months at Tallow Beach; that winter was so mild and lovely that when we found a property just further down the beach, we decided to buy it.” The family moved into that house a year later, then lived between Sydney, New York and France for three years before moving back full-time in September 2019, which allowed them enough time to nest before both the pandemic unexpectedly took hold and Kirra arrived.
“I grew up with a dream in mind as to how I would raise my kids ... to have them playing in rock pools and seeing them learn how to surf,” says Ward of her own childhood in Perth. “All my favourite memories are of camping with my family, and going up and down the coast to rugged places, and I wanted nature to be a big part of their upbringing.”
The only thing missing from this perfect picture has been immediate family on Ward’s side. “It has been difficult. I haven’t been able to see my mum and dad and they haven’t been able to meet Kirra, but we talk all the time,” she says, explaining that her mother is British and spends half the year in France, while she also has a grandmother who’s in lockdown in England.
She’s recently had friends swoop in, with Jessica Gomes and Nicole Trunfio both visiting. Even so, Ward insists her preferred Byron is more family-friendly than celebrity hotspot. She does not begrudge, however, the surge in popularity (and supposed traffic jams) in the last year, helped along by the Hemsworths, their posse of famous friends, and several productions like Nicole Kidman’s Nine Perfect Strangers, being shot nearby.
“I’m in the creative industry, so I feel like seeing more work coming here is a positive thing,” she says. “It’s a dream for a lot of people to live here, but to have enough work or the right kind of work to be creatively fulfilled is something that might be missing for some people. So I think it’s really positive, but not everyone sees it that way.”
She could also be referring back to her own shoot, which gave her the creative satisfaction she used to get from international projects, without having to venture too far down the highway, let alone jump on a plane. “It was nice just to feel like I could be home in Byron and do something really different that was getting creative with colour,” she reflects with one final thought. “It’s like a dream come true.”
This story appears in Vogue Australia’s March 2021 issue, on sale March 8.
