In Her Words by Horsham Town Hall

In Her Words Curated by Olivia Poloni A Horsham Regional Art Gallery and NETS Victoria exhibition

Catalogue Design Adelle Rohrsheim argraphicdesign.com.au Printer Revolution Print Edition 500 ISBN 978-0-9579962-4-3 Catalogue Published by Horsham Regional Art Gallery 80 Wilson Street Horsham VIC 3400 Text © the authors and Horsham Regional Art Gallery. The views and opinions expressed in this catalogue are those of the authors. No material, weather written or photographic, may be reproduced without the permission of the artist, authors and Horsham Regional Art Gallery. Every effort has been made to ensure that any text and images in this publication have been reproduced with the permission of the artist or the appropriate authorities, wherever it is possible. Images © 2019 the artist. Horsham Regional Art Gallery acknowledges that this exhibition and publication have been produced on the traditional lands of the Wotjobaluk, Jaadwa, Jaadwadjali, Wergaia and Jupagulk people. We pay our respect to each of the traditional custodians and to their tribal Elders.

Exhibition Dates

Tour Venues

2 March – 19 May 2019

HOST VENUE: Horsham Regional Art Gallery, VIC

11 September – 18 October 2019

Deakin University, Burwood, VIC

2 November – 15 December 2019

Wangaratta Art Gallery, VIC

16 May – 12 July 2020

Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, VIC

31 July – 5 September 2020

Logan Art Gallery, QLD

Details correct at time of printing.

Cover image Cherine FAHD Visible Mother 2 from the series Visible Mothers 2010-19, archival pigment print, 50 x 50cm, courtesy of the artist. © the artist.

R E G I O N A L A R T GA L L E RY

This project has been assisted by NETS Victoria’s Exhibitions Development Fund, supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria

In Her Words Curated by Olivia Poloni

A NETS Victoria and Horsham Regional Art Gallery touring exhibition.

Contents Foreword Olivia Poloni

5–6

Through Her Lens: Women in the Horsham Regional Art Gallery Collection Michelle Mountain 7–8 Collection Images

9–10

In Her Words: The Power of Women’s Self-Representation and Storytelling Dr Athena Bellas

11–14

Images

15–24

Artist Biographies

25–28

Jill ORR Southern Cross – to bear and behold – missionary 3, 2007 inkjet print on crane silver rag paper 94 x 160cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund with assistance from the Robert Salzer Foundation, 2010. Image courtesy of the artist. © the artist

In Her Words

Forward Olivia Poloni, Curator

In Her Words is an exhibition that celebrates image making dictated by women, both behind and in front of the camera. It brings together Horsham Regional Art Gallery Collection works, that range from the 1970s to current day, and exhibits them alongside a number of key practitioners in the contemporary field. The exhibition features the works of 27 artists who use the lens as a tool to record the personal and universal world around us. Polixeni Papapetrou’s images in this exhibition continue to reflect on the relationship between herself and her daughter. Exploring motherhood, childhood and also, for the first-time, selfhood and her own relationship with the camera. Papapetrou’s works have traversed through documenting the stories of subcultures and capturing vast and varied imagined worlds. Imaginary worlds are also explored in this exhibition through the work of Julie Rrap, where we see videos of notable women artists in slumber. They snooze amongst pristine white sheets, a blank canvas, where their artistic ideas are born in their dreams. Hoda Afshar’s images also

discuss navigating worlds but this passage is between two very real worlds, her birth country of Iran and her new home Australia. The body and its relationship to its surrounding environment is explored in the work of Clare Rae. By placing her body within architectural and environmental structures, she brings forth questions around the position of women’s bodies in the world. Likewise, Kawita Vatanajyankur places herself within the frame and uses it to discuss the social and economic positions of women within Southeast Asia, and in this exhibition within clothing production and labour. Kirsten Lyttle also discusses women’s labour, within her traditional Māori cultural history and shows us found historical images of women in production – weaving. Lyttle reconnects with these images by hand weaving the photographic paper in traditional Māori weaving patterns and forms to create the finished work. The use of form, fold and the body is also explored in the work of Anne Ferran who has built a longstanding practice using movement and fabric to discuss

endurance and the female condition. Linsey Gosper’s diptych in this exhibition continues her interest in gender, identity and sexuality from a queer feminist perspective. She uses the androgynous body to celebrate a future where gender stereotypes are disused and less restrictive identities are the norm. Karla Dickens is a Wiradjuri artist who works with a variety of mediums investigating her Indigenous heritage, sexuality and life experiences as a single mother. Here we see raw and challenging photographs centered on the rampant epidemic of violence and discrimination against women, the bodies absent from the screen but the painful realities present. We see the body absent/concealed in Cherine Fahd’s images inspired by 19th century ‘hidden mother’ images. Here the artist juxtaposes her concealed image with a found image of a mother staring straight at the camera, aimed to give each woman presence and agency as opposed to erasing them.

I take this opportunity to extend thanks and gratitude to the artists included in this exhibition and their galleries for their support; to Athena Bella for her considered words; to Michelle Mountain for her ongoing support and contextualising the Collection works; Adam Harding for his immediate enthusiasm for this project and to NETS Victoria and Horsham Regional Art Gallery who made this project possible.

In Her Words

Through Her Lens: Women in the Horsham Regional Art Gallery Collection Michelle Mountain, HRAG Curator

The Horsham Regional Art Gallery Collection was founded in 1967 with the acquisition of its first work, a portrait by Margaret Gill. The gallery was subsequently established in 1973 and two years later, on the advice of the Regional Galleries Association, Director Jean Davidson elected to specialise the collection in Australian photography. While this was not entirely a popular decision with the trustees or public, it established the collection at a time when photography was starting to gain recognition in Australia’s public galleries. By 1976, Max Dupain’s Meat Queue 1946 and Carol Jerrems’ Vale Street 1975 were acquired into the collection. Horsham Regional Art Gallery’s photographic collection has since grown to be one of considerable significance, in part due to the many notable female photographers in its ranks.

An apt genesis for the collection, Carol Jerrems’ Vale Street cemented an appreciation in the collection for women telling their own story. Vale Street’s bold female subject has a confidence that is set against the intimacy of her nudity and the diffidence of her male companions. Her expression is unapologetic yet enchanting, revealing depth to both women behind and in front of the camera. Over the next few years Jean Davidson continued to build the Horsham Regional Art Gallery Collection through close consultation with two prominent women in the field of photography – Jennie Boddington, curator of photography at the National Gallery of Victoria, and Joyce Evans founder of the Church Street Photography Centre, Melbourne. Evans’ own work was later acquired to the collection, with the first acquisition, The Ascent 1993, exhibiting the same defiant female gaze as Jerrems’ work. During the 1990’s, key feminist photographers were collected; including Janina Green, whose Vacuum series 1992 explored oppressive domesticity through the strange constructed interiors in ‘Home Beautiful’ magazines; and Sandy Edwards who photographed Marina, the young

daughter of friends, through the change of adolescence. A notable acquisition in 1992 was of a work by Leah King-Smith from her series Patterns of Connection 1991, which explored the return of 19th Century photographs of Indigenous Australians to the land by superimposing the images over her own photographs of the Victorian landscape. King-Smith was the first of many Indigenous photographers acquired, including Tracey Moffatt and Fiona Foley, as the photography of Australia’s First Nations people has become a significant component of the Gallery’s Collection. Tracey Moffatt’s Self Portrait 1999, epitomises the act of redefining one’s identity in one’s own terms, her weapon of choice, the camera, clasped in her elegantly manicured hands. While the Horsham Regional Art Gallery Collection holds a number of important historic female photographers, the acquisition of work by contemporary female artists was somewhat sparse until 2007. Subsequently, there was a noticeable increase in female photographers entering the Collection, often out-numbering the acquisition of male photographers year to year. From earlier works by Polixeni Papapetrou, Pat Brassington, Ponch Hawkes and Deborah Paauwe, to key works by Polly Borland and Jill Orr, and more recent works by Eliza Hutchison, Zoë Croggon and Simone Slee; the increased focus on female lens-based practice over

the past twelve years has established a significant collection of feminist work. Generous gifts such as the Nance Kroker bequest have also allowed the gallery to focus further on feminist photography by investing in influential work by Anne Ferran and supporting emerging artists, such as recently acquired Honey Long and Prue Stent. Since first realising its conception as a collection of Australian photography through the work of Carol Jerrems, the Horsham Regional Art Gallery Collection has come to represent an eminent register of women artists in Australia, who work to bend the lens of the camera to their own gaze. Through the guidance of early curators and gallerists and more emphatically in recent times, women in the collection have found their voice substantially over the past twelve years. Be it Anne Ferran’s reimagining of classical conventions; Orr, Slee and Croggon’s performative bodies; Moffatt and Foley’s assertions of Indigenous self-representation; all of these works speak of women taking back their voice behind and in front of the camera.

In Her Words

10 2

9. Zoë CROGGON Untitled #3 2012 C-type print 65 x 47cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist and Daine Singer, Melbourne. © the artist

3 5

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1. Tracey MOFFATT Self Portrait 1999 hand coloured photograph 34 x 22cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund with the assistance of the Robert Salzer Foundation 2012. Image courtesy the artist. © the artist 2. Pat BRASSINGTON The Wedding Guest 2005 pigment print on paper 86 x 65cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund, 2008. Image courtesy of the artist and ARC ONE, Melbourne. © the artist 3. Carol JERREMS Vale Street 1975 silver gelatin print 41 x 51cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund, 1976. Image courtesy of the artist’s estate. © Ken and Lance Jerrems 4. Simone SLEE How Long (Frankfurt railway station) from the series How Long 2008-14 (ongoing) giclee print on archival paper 86 x 58cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist and Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne. © the artist

5. Simone SLEE How Long (Hong Kong) from the series How Long 2008-14 (ongoing) giclee print on archival paper 86 x 58cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist and Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne. © the artist 6. Simone SLEE How Long (Quantong) from the series How Long 2008-14 (ongoing) giclee print on archival paper, 86 x 58cm. HRAG Collection, gift of the artist, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist and Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne. © the artist 7. Honey LONG and Prue STENT Salt Pool 2018 archival pigment print 106 x 157cm. HRAG Collection, purchased the HRAG Trust Fund, with assistance from the Nance Kroker Bequest, 2018. Image courtesy of the artist and ARC ONE, Melbourne. © the artists 8. Ponch HAWKES Grace 2006 C-type photograph 51 x 34cm. HRAG Collection, gift of the Julie Millowick Acquistive Award, 2007. Image courtesy the artist. © the artist

10. Zoë CROGGON Untitled #6 2012 C-type print 65 x 45cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist and Daine Singer, Melbourne. © the artist 11. Deborah PAAUWE Falling Awake 2006 C-type photograph 75 x 75cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund, 2007. Image courtesy of the artist and Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin. © the artist 12. Janina GREEN Untitled 1992 from the series Vacuum computer generated photographic image 81 x 79cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund, 1995. Image courtesy the artist and M33, Melbourne. © the artist 13. Polly BORLAND Untitled XV from the series Smudge 2010 C-type print, 76 x 65cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund with Assistance from Robert Salzer Foundation, 2014. Image courtesy the artist and Murray White Room, Melbourne. © the artist 14. Fiona FOLEY Nulla 4 eva V 2009 ultrachrome print on Hanemühle paper 80 x 120cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund, 2009. Image courtesy of the artist and Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane. © the artist 15. Polixeni PAPAPETROU Animalesque 2001 inkjet print on paper 35 x 28cm. HRAG Collection, donated by the Bardas Family in memory of Sandra Bardas, 2011. © the artist’s estate 16. Polixeni PAPAPETROU Cu(l)t 2001 inkjet print on paper 28 x 27cm. HRAG Collection, donated by the Bardas Family in memory of Sandra Bardas, 2011. © the artist’s estate

17. Anne FERRAN Scene I & II (diptych) 1986 from the series Scenes on the Death of Nature silver gelatin print 125 x 311cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund, with assistance from the Nance Kroker Bequest, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne. © the artist 18. Eliza HUTCHISON Heart of Glass, Prince Alfred 2012 from the series Hair in the Gate light jet print 40 x 60cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund, 2014. Image courtesy of the artist. © the artist 19. Joyce EVANS The Ascent 1993 silver gelatin print 186 x 89cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund, 1999. © the artist 20. Sandy EDWARDS Marina meets Horizon 1988-95 from the series Paradise is a Place silver gelatin print 31 x 41cm. HRAG collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund, with assistance from the Victorian Public Galleries Foundation, 1998. © the artist 21. Pat BRASSINGTON Untitled lll 2002 inkjet print on paper 37 x 25cm. HRAG Collection, donated by the Bardas Family in memory of Sandra Bardas, 2011. © the artist 22. Leah KING-SMITH Untitled 1991 from the series Patterns of Connection C-type photograph 105 x 100cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund with assistance from the Victorian Regional Galleries Art Foundation Trust Fund, 1992. Image courtesy of the artist. © the artist 23. Jill ORR Southern Cross - to bear and behold - missionary 3 2007 inkjet print on crane silver rag paper 94 x 160cm. HRAG Collection, purchased through the HRAG Trust Fund with assistance from the Robert Salzer Foundation, 2010. Image courtesy of the artist. © the artist

In Her Words

In Her Words: The Power of Women’s Self-Representation and Storytelling Dr Athena Bellas

Being able to control your own story – how it is represented, how it is told, and what images it is associated with – is a source of power. For many women artists, this process often involves reclaiming their narratives, bodies, and personal and collective histories from a determining patriarchal lens. In her work on the female gaze and selfie culture, Mary McGill writes that ‘[w]ithout the ability to look, and to have that look acknowledged, expressed, represented, women in culture can never be subjects, only objects.’¹ Being behind the camera and controlling the production and dissemination of their images, female photographers can powerfully represent and assert their role as subject, rather than simply object, of visual culture. Kawita Vatanajyankur, whose work is exhibited in In Her Words, states, ‘[f]eminism seems to have always been the key message to my work. My work

focuses on valuing women’s everyday work and labour while offering a powerful examination of social and cultural ways of viewing women’s work.’² In Vatanajyankur’s work, we see a desire to move beyond the patriarchal lens invoked earlier in this essay, and a move to represent women from a different angle, one that may subvert existing assumptions and encourage us to think anew about gender and power. For several artists, including those featured in the exhibition, this patriarchal lens is entangled with other oppressive structures such as colonialism, racism, and imperialism. Therefore, there is much at stake, both personally and culturally, in women’s representations of themselves, their heritage, and their imaginaries. In a recent interview, Karla Dickens commented on what is at stake in her artistic practice: I’ve been angry, shaking my head, wanting to step up, you know, have a big voice. Wanting to stick my head in the sand […] You look at Indigenous history in this country and sometimes you hear things that happen; nothing changes. And for us, we have to keep questioning and being really honest about what’s going on.³

Dickens’ comments remind us of the power of art to articulate things that may otherwise go unsaid, or enact something that may otherwise not have been thought of. Her work often explores the intersections between sexual violence and racialised violence, giving voice to experiences that are often left unspoken or indeed suppressed. Her photographic work entitled Exposed II (Unspoken) 2016 features brightly lit images of women’s underwear half-buried in dirt, gravel and grasses, conjuring the aesthetic of crime scene documentation. This work is accompanied by a poetic description that includes the phrase: ‘not white enough / not black enough / yet a perfect shade of dishonour,’ distilling in one devastating turn of phrase the way in which Indigenous victims of sexual violence are failed by sexist and racist Australian institutions. This artwork is an unearthing, a refusal to stay silent, and a protest against those structures. By memorialising that which is usually wilfully ignored, celebrating that which is most often devalued, reclaiming that which has been wrongfully taken, and imagining alternatives to existing systems, art-making can become an act of resistance, a remedy, a disruption, a method for generating new articulations that go beyond prescribed limits. Representations that go against the grain of the dominant, offer us ways of seeing ourselves and others

in new ways, and this is vitally important to the process of envisaging and enacting social change. However, we still have work to do when it comes to valuing artworks created from these diverse perspectives, and this can be seen in statistics regarding both the production and reception of works created by women. For example, based on data collected in Australia in 2014, Elvis Richardson found that while 73% of art school graduates were women, over half of artists exhibited in commercial galleries and state museums were men.⁴ Additionally, a comprehensive 2017 analysis of 1.5 million art auction sales showed that works created by female artists sell for almost 50% less than paintings by men.⁵ While women account for half of moviegoers, only 8% of directors of 2018’s top 250 grossing films were women.⁶ In American prime time television programming and streaming services 2017-18, women accounted for 40% of all speaking characters, the majority of which were white; and women undertook 27% of key production roles.⁷ I linger on these statistics because they reflect how our culture fails to fully value women’s perspectives, voices, ideas, competencies, works and practices. What echoes across all of these statistical findings is a lack of opportunity for and funding of female creative works, as well as both conscious and unconscious bias that is detrimental to both

In Her Words

Notes the evaluation and reception of women’s creative work. Art historian Griselda Pollock writes lucidly on this question of bias: [T]he terms ‘art’ and ‘artist’, seemingly neutral terms, in fact register, without having to advertise it openly, a privileging of masculinity as synonymous with creativity because in order to indicate that an artist is a woman, the neutral term artist must be qualified by an adjective. The effect is, in fact, to disqualify the woman artist immediately from being treated as an artist. Artist/ woman artist, artist/black artist, artist/queer artist: any qualification has the effect of marking the second term, loading it with local particularities while leaving unspoken and unmarked the privileged and seemingly universal term, artist, as the space for masculinity, whiteness, heterosexuality.⁸

Thus, art created by men is generally seen as of interest to everyone while women’s art is often coded as ‘special interest.’ If we are to shift this pattern, it is not only important for individuals to seek out women’s art, but perhaps most importantly, for cultural institutions to confront biases that may exist in their exhibition practices. This is why exhibitions like In Her Words are so important; they both acknowledge and work to remedy this paradigmatic problem. When cultural institutions not only recognise but also give prominence to women artists who take up the power of the photographic gaze, they give us the opportunity to think about women as cultural producers, as subjects, as more than objects of this gaze. They present us with knowledges, histories, legacies, that we may not previously have understood. Their interventions into visual culture challenge us to go beyond everyday assumptions and carve out space to counter these norms. The more this occurs, the more likely we are to approach a critical mass where significant changes to these old paradigms of subject/object can take place. This is such invaluable and exciting work because it increases the depth of our vision, the texture of our worlds, our resolve to resist harmful structures of the status quo, and our capacity to imagine and enact alternative ways of being in the world.

¹ Mary McGill, ‘How the Light Gets In: Notes on the Female Gaze and Selfie Culture,’ 01 May 2018, MAI Feminism, <https://maifeminism.com/how-the-light-gets-in-notes-on the-female-gaze-and-selfie-culture/>, accessed 23 Jan. 2019. ² Kawita Vatanajyankur, Antidote, <https://www.antidote.org au/artists/kawita-vatanajyankur/>, accessed 23 Jan. 2019. ³ Karla Dickens in conversation with Penelope Benton, Jan. 2019, NAVA In Conversation, Episode 38 <https://visualarts net.au/podcasts/episode-38-karla-dickens-conversation penelope-benton/>, accessed 28 Jan. 2019. ⁴ Elvis Richardson, ‘The Countess Report,’ Feb. 2016, CoUNTess: Women Count in the Art-World, <http:/ thecountessreport.com.au/The%20Countess%20Report FINAL.pdf>, accessed 15 Jan. 2019. ⁵ Renee B. Adams et al., Is Gender in the Eye of the Beholder? Identifying Cultural Attitudes with Art Auction Prices, 6 Dec. 2017, <https://dx.doi.org/10.2139 ssrn.3083500>, accessed 15 Jan. 2019.

⁶ Dr Martha Lauzen, The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind-the Scenes Employment of Women on the Top 100, 250, and 500 films of 2018, Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, <https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp content/uploads/2019/01/2018_Celluloid_Ceiling_Report pdf>, accessed 20 Jan. 2019. ⁷ Dr Martha Lauzen, Boxed in 2017-18: Women on Screen and Behind the Scenes in Television, Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, <https://womenintvfilm sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/2017-18_Boxed In_Report.pdf>, accessed 20 Jan. 2019. ⁸ Griselda Pollock, ‘A Lonely Preface,’ in R Parker and G Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology (New Edition), I.B. Tauris, London, 2013, xix.

In Her Words

Hoda AFSHAR Portrait #6 2016 from the series In the exodus, I love you more 2014 – ongoing, archival pigment print 112 x 91cm. Image courtesy of the artist. © the artist

Cherine FAHD Visible Mother 1, 2010-19 from the series Visible Mothers archival pigment print 50 x 50cm Image courtesy of the artist. © the artist

In Her Words

Anne FERRAN White Against Red 4, 2018 digital print on canvas 250 x 150cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne. © the artist

In Her Words

Karla DICKENS Exposed III 2016 inkjet print 30 x 22cm Image courtesy of the artist and Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane. ÂŠ the artist

Kirsten LYTTLE Korea Weave/Aramoana (White bait/Ocean pathways) 2012 hand woven archival inkjet prints 74 x 96cm Image courtesy of the artist. ÂŠ the artist

In Her Words

Polixeni PAPAPETROU I am a camera 2018 silkscreen photograph on silver foil on Belgian linen 100 x 100cm. Image courtesy of Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin and the artist’s estate. © the artist’s estate

In Her Words

Julie RRAP Artists Dreaming (Cherine Fahd) 2015 from a series of 30, multi-channel HD video (still) dimensions variable, courtesy of the artist, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney and ARC ONE Gallery, Melbourne. © the artist

Kawita VATANAJYANKUR Shuttle 2018 HD video 3:27 min. Image courtesy of the artist, Nova Contemporary, Clear Gallery Tokyo and Antidote Organisation. Commissioned by Dunedin Public Art Gallery. © the artist

In Her Words

Artist Biographies Hoda Afshar (b. 1983) explores the nature and possibilities of documentary image-making. Working across photography and moving-image, she considers the representation of gender, marginality and displacement. In her work, Afshar employs processes that disrupt traditional image-making practices, play with the presentation of imagery, or merge aspects of conceptual, staged and documentary photography. www.hodaafshar.com Pat Brassington (b. 1942) is one of Australia’s most significant and influential artists working in photo-media. With a career spanning four decades, Brassington has become well known for her incisive ability to infuse the familiar with the fantastic. Her practice is informed by an interest in surrealism, feminism and psychoanalysis. Seemingly innocent, her enigmatic photomontages open up like a flower, gorgeous and suggestive, then morph into a psychological Rorschach. www.arcone.com.au Polly Borland (b. 1959) established her practice in the late 1980s through major portrait commissions and extraordinary reportage. Since 2000 the photographer’s art projects, exhibitions and publications have recorded documentary, collaborative and created subjects. Borland explores the possibilities of abstraction and the surreal through her photographs, at once tender and troubling, they are poignantly human and pointedly not; an amalgam of humour, the uncanny and a disquieting uneasiness. www.pollyborland.com | www.murraywhiteroom.com www.sullivanstrumpf.com

Zoë Croggon (b. 1989) works with sculpture, video, drawing and primarily, collage. Her practice considers the relationship between the kinetic body and its surroundings, contemplating the role we play in our environment and how deeply our surroundings inform the cadence of our lives. The body has long been the focus of Croggon’s work, presenting the trained body and modern architecture as fascinating counterparts; each unyielding, severe, and rigorously functional in form. www.dainesinger.com | www.zoecroggon.com Karla Dickens (b. 1967) is a Wiradjuri artist known for poetic assemblages that voice personal and shared experiences of dispossession, misogyny, sex and mental health. Following the death of a close friend in 1997, crosses began appearing as motifs within her paintings and in 2000 Dickens began incorporating text into her work. www.karladickens.com.au | www.andrew-baker.com Sandy Edwards (b. 1948) is a key figure in Australian photography, known widely for a deeply personal approach to documentary image making that focuses on the portrayal of women and Aboriginal communities. Her sensitive and evocative photographs are taken with an intuitive response to feelings, people and place. By considering the intersection of human lives she broadens the genre of portraiture to explore inter-relational themes such as trust, love and community. www.stillsgallery.com.au

Joyce Evans (b. 1929) works as a documentary photographer. Major areas of investigation include the edge of the road, road kills and fatalities, the land, and many other bodies of focused photo essays and photographic work. Evans’ portrait photographs are insightful character studies, taken mainly in black and white, at close range, with the underlying emphasis on the psychological connexion between the sitter and his or her own space. www.joyceevansphotographer.com Cherine Fahd (b. 1974) has worked for two decades with documentary modes of image making. Much of her early works presented a surrealist engagement with spontaneous actions that involved hiding herself and her subjects from view, as well as the documentation of peculiar gestures. Currently, she continues to test the distinctions between the staged and unstaged image, while asking questions of the ways we perform for the camera. www.cherinefahd.com Anne Ferran (b. 1949) has been exhibiting since the 1980s. Her landmark series Scenes on the Death of Nature presented at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, in 1987, established her as one of Australia’s leading photographic artists. In the mid-1990s she began working with the often meagre residues of Australian colonial past, paying particular attention to the lives of women and children. www.anneferran.com | www.suttongallery.com.au

Fiona Foley (b. 1964) is a founding member of Boomalli Aboriginal Artist Co-operative. She exhibits regularly in Australia and internationally. Her recent solo exhibitions were held at Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane in 2017 and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne in 2012. www.fionafoley.com.au Linsey Gosper (b. 1978) is an artist, curator and art educator. Her art practice investigates the construction and performativity of gender, identity and sexuality from a feminist perspective. Working predominately with photography and installation, she is continuing her experimentation with the materiality of the photographic medium through darkroom processes. www.linseygosper.com Janina Green (b. 1944) has established an experimental photographic practice over 30 years, making observations about domesticity, motherhood, reading, teaching, sexual politics, theory and psychology. Green’s early life as a working class migrant growing up in an industrial town in rural Victoria made her understand identity as a fluid and dynamic concept, which is powerfully conveyed in her work. www.janinagreen.blogspot.com | www.m33.net.au Ponch Hawkes (b. 1946) is a Melbourne-based photographic artist whose work has been widely exhibited and published in Australia. A significant part of Hawkes’ output is documentary, and a commentary on Australian society and cultural life since the 1970s. In her work she considers topics such as: the body and movement; sport; circus and theatre; the environment and community; and relationships—with a feminist purpose. www.ponchhawkes.com.au

In Her Words

Artist Biographies continued... Eliza Hutchison (b.1965) describes her photographic practice in terms of ‘reconstructed memory’. In a career stretching back to the 1990s, Hutchison has worked to slice, shred, fold, mirror and sculpt photographic images, materials and surfaces to both activate and complicate the photograph’s chain of command. www.elizahutchison.com.au | www.murraywhiteroom.com www.perimeterbooks.com Carol Jerrems (b.1949, d.1980) was the first contemporary Australian woman photographer to have work acquired by a number of museums including the National Gallery of Australia in 1976. Jerrems put her camera where counter culture suggested; women’s liberation, social inclusiveness for street youths and Indigenous people in the cities who were campaigning for justice and land rights. Her poetic and elusive images show people trying to find a new way of life in the 1970s. www.nga.gov.au/Jerrems Leah King Smith (b. 1956) is a Bigambul descendant and a visual artist and lecturer in Brisbane. Her focus is particularly driven by change for equity and cultural competence in teaching and learning, as well as the encouragement of cultural perspectives in practice-led research. King Smith has an extensive career as a photo and digital media artist, encompassing solo, collaborative and group exhibitions, community engagement, dance performances, theatre productions, international cultural exchanges, book covers, story illustration and experimental film and video work. www.staff.qut.edu.au/staff/l.king-smith

Honey Long (b.1993) and Prue Stent (b.1993) are multidisciplinary artists whose work is a commingling of photography, performance, installation and sculpture. Their practice centres on their conflicted relationship to femininity and its passive associations. Often their process is spontaneous and playful with the result being unexpected and accidental. Along with many shared interests and fascinations they have a perverse curiosity to interact with alluring materials and objects, incorporating them into costumes or disguises which distort and fragment the bodily form. www.honeyandprue.com | www.arcone.com.au

Jill Orr (b.1952) has delighted, shocked and moved audiences through her performance installations which she has presented in cities such as Paris, Beijing, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Antwerp New York, Toronto, Quebec City, Graz, Hong Kong, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane from the late 1970s to now. Orr’s work centres on issues of the psycho-social and environmental where she draws on land and identities as they are shaped in, on and with the environment, be it country or urban locales. www.jillorr.com.au

Kirsten Lyttle (b. 1972) a Melbourne based multi-media artist who is of Māori descent. Her Iwi (tribe) is Waikato, tribal affiliation is Ngāti Tahinga, Tainui A Whiro. Her arts practise explores issues of post-colonialism, identity and the expression of Māori customary art (in particular, weaving) through digital technologies, such as photography and scanning. www.kirstenlyttle.com.au

Deborah Paauwe (b. 1972) investigates identity and gender roles and the blurred boundary between being a girl and being a woman. Often it takes a moment to decipher the age of her subject because the usual clues lie hidden behind a confection of brightly coloured vintage dresses, bows, feathers and sequins. Paauwe’s models’ faces are never seen, they can stand for anyone’s wife, mother, sister or daughter. www.deborahpaauwe.com | www.michaelreid.com.au

Tracey Moffatt (b. 1960) is one of Australia’s most internationally recognised photographers and film-makers. Moffatt has held around 100 solo exhibitions of her work in Europe, the United States and Australia. She began her career as an experimental filmmaker and producer of music videos, and continued making films after establishing herself as a photographer. www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/moffatt-tracey

Polixeni Papapetrou (b.1960, d.2018) is a photographic artist who explores the relationship between history, contemporary culture, identity and being. Her subject matter has included Elvis Presley fans, Marilyn Monroe impersonators, circus performers and body builders and the cultural positioning of childhood. Her work has featured in over 50 solo exhibitions, and over 100 group exhibitions in Australia, the United States, Asia and Europe. www.polixenipapapetrou.net | www.michaelreid.com.au

Clare Rae (b. 1981) explores ideas of performance and gesture to interrogate and subvert dominant modes of representation. Her work is informed by feminist theory, and presents an alternate and often awkward experience of subjectivity and the female body, usually the artists’ own. www.clarerae.com/about Julie Rrap (b. 1950) has been a major figure in Australian contemporary art for over three decades. Since the mid1970s, she has worked with photography, painting, sculpture, performance and video in an ongoing project concerned with representations of the body. www.julierrap.com | www.roslynoxley9.com.au www.arcone.com.au Simone Slee (b.1965) makes work that has its origins in sculpture, installations, photographs, videos and objects that have a performative outcome or potential. Failure, humour and vulnerability continue to emerge as key concerns in her practice such as works derived from the deployment of her own body in relation to space, time and objects. www.sarahscoutpresents.com Kawita Vatanajyankur (b. 1987) uses her dynamic video art as a springboard to explore the value and understanding of women’s labour and manual work. In her staged performances, Vatanajyankur undertakes physical experiments that playfully, often painfully, test her body’s limits – a challenge that is both unavoidably compelling and uncomfortable to watch. www.antidote.org.au www.kawita-v.com

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