Ev opened Cape Gallery on Lawson Street in Byron Bay in the early 1980s. It was the first art gallery in town. Through the gallery she helped develop the nascent visual arts scene, exhibiting many of the up-and-coming North Coast artists emerging at that time including Rose McKinley, David Lane, Bonny Bombach, Noel Hart, Karena Wynn-Moylan, James Guppy, Christine Willcocks, and many others. She held memorable exhibition openings when these sorts of events weren’t common. Notoriously, Rolf Harris exhibited and was present for the opening party.
Ev was raised in Argentina with English and American parents. She met Mike King-Prime, also raised in Argentina with British parents, when both were living in London. They moved to Sydney, Australia in 1971 where Mike started to paint seriously, while also working in advertising and animation.
They bought a Kombi van and came to the Northern Rivers at the same time as the Aquarius Festival was on in Nimbin in 1973. While looking for somewhere to buy they looked at a block of land at Wategos Beach that cost $14,000. It was a little block with sandy soil but Ev wanted to grow things. Instead, they bought 64 acres in the village of Federal and built their own house.
‘They were beautiful days. We grew food, planted trees and reforested,’ Ev said. ‘Mike kept going down to Sydney to work at Hanna Barbera because we needed the income, then he went to Los Angeles and the Philippines to teach animation and he was away a lot.’
When Mike came back from his time overseas Ev suggested he put his artwork in the gallery and it took off like wildfire from there, prompting their move to the US. Sometime in the late ’80s, early ’90s, Ev and Mike sold their house in Byron Bay and moved, with their son, to the US to live for 11 years.
Mike painted while Ev marketed his work, which was well received and successful. When they came back to Australia they lived in Bangalow for a while and opened a gallery and sold Mike’s work at the Bangalow markets before moving to Lismore. Mike died in November 2020. Ev died in April 2026.
Ev and Mike’s legacy live on in Mike’s work of Byron Bay landscapes, in a poster he did of Byron Bay, a painting of the main street of Bangalow that is a post card and his logo for the Music Farm recording studio that is still used today, 50 years later.
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