ARTONVIEW 101 Know My Name Special Edition | Autumn 2020 GU E ST E DI T OR Alison Kubler E D I T OR Eric Meredith E NQU I R I E S artonview.editor@nga.gov.au ADV E RT I SI NG E NQUI RI E S ArtonviewAdvertising@nga.gov.au D E SIG N Hayman Design PRIN T Metro Printing Printed on FSC certified paper using vegetable-based inks ISSN 1323-4552 ISSN 2208-6218 (Online) © National Gallery of Australia 2020 GPO Box 1150, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia +61 (0)2 6240 6411 nga.gov.au F O L L OW U S @nationalgalleryaus @nationalgalleryofaustralia #knowmyname The National Gallery of Australia acknowledges the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, the traditional custodians of the Canberra region, and recognises their continuous connection to culture, community and Country.
Welcome to this special edition of Artonview dedicated to the National Gallery of Australia’s project Know My Name. There has been a growing groundswell in recent years across culture and society, an awareness of the need to better recognise the achievements of women. In line with this, the National Gallery of Australia made a decision to examine its own collection as a first step in understanding gender equity representation and made the perhaps unsurprising discovery that women made up only 25% of the national collection. The Gallery had to ask uncomfortable questions and place its collection, exhibition and public programs under scrutiny. It has immediately set about making commitments to permanent change, recognising that this is greater than mere rhetoric. The National Gallery of Australia’s vision is to lead a national progressive cultural agenda and contribute to the important discussion on gender equity and inclusion that is happening in other sectors. To that end, Know My Name is something of a reset for the Gallery. It involves a completely holistic rethinking of practices looking to the future. As the national collection, and the most important art collection in the nation,
the National Gallery of Australia must be seen to lead the agenda. It is not enough to stage a series of exhibitions, interventions and projects that recognise women. Those projects have been done in the past many times. Know My Name will not be a one-off campaign for recognition. Once the key values are embedded in the culture, it will become the way things are done. In that regard, Know My Name is a declaration of intent, a call to action. Historically, I believe this campaign will be as significant as the purchase of Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles 1952 in terms of its national cultural legacy. This special dedicated issue, which I am honoured to guest edit, with special writers and features, is a snapshot of 2020 through the lens of Know My Name. There will be extraordinary exhibitions, public programs, talks, lectures, performances and happenings that provoke and inspire. And it is just the beginning. Alison Kubler Know My Name Project Board
WARNING: Artonview may contain names and images of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Published quarterly. Copyright of works of art is held by the artists or their estates. Every effort has been made to identify copyright holders but omissions may occur. Views expressed by writers are not necessarily those of the National Gallery of Australia.
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04 Know My Name A landmark exhibition seeks to elevate the status of women artists in Australia, now and into the future.
27 Patricia Piccinini Artist Patricia Piccinini creates fantastical creatures that suggest what it means to be human.
07 Work by women in the national collection The National Gallery of Australia is reassessing its approach to collecting work by women artists.
08 Bhenji Ra
Bhenji Ra is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice combines dance, choreography, video, installation and club events.
09 Nan Goldin
A project that brings both historical and contemporary works by forty-five significant Australian women artists into the lives of everyday Australians.
18 Taking Know My Name across Australia
10 Margaret Worth
21 2020 Gala chef Christine Manfield
Natasha Bullock interviews Sally Smart on why the time has come to acknowledge women artists and women in the arts across all fields and why Know My Name is a campaign for all time.
14 All About Women
Samantha Jones speaks to Dr Edwina Throsby about an upcoming program at the Sydney Opera House and her take on the pulse of feminism today.
25 Alice Topp
16 National art event
The National Gallery of Australia is a collection for the nation, which means taking Know My Name on the road.
12 Do you know my name?
A campaign by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, USA.
An excerpt from the 2019 Countess Report.
Anne O’Hehir highlights American artist Nan Goldin, whose work since the 1970s has had far-reaching social impacts.
Elspeth Pitt interviews Margaret Worth about her painting practice.
24 #5WomenArtists
15 The Countess Report 2019
28 Women of Letters
We asked the award-winning author of Eggshell skull and Beauty, Bri Lee to name five female writers she admires the most.
22 Dame Quentin Bryce
24 The Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art and the Sheila Foundation One woman’s passion sparked a collection and gave birth to a foundation to support gender parity in the arts.
26 Tjanpi Desert Weavers
Annieka Skinner talks about the Tjanpi Desert Weavers’ new work for the National Gallery of Australia.
30 Know My Name exhibitions and event highlights 32 Acknowledgments and how to support Know My Name
2020 Gala chef Christine Manfield shares a recipe for roasted flathead, confit tomatoes and green harissa.
Alison Kubler interviews Dame Quentin Bryce about the Know My Name initiative.
Jessica Ausserlechner asks Alice Topp about her experience as a dancer and her move into choreography in 2010.
29 Women of Note(s) Rising star of Australian music Jack River gives us five women inspiring women in the Australian music industry.
COVER Jan Nelson Walking in tall grass, Lilith 2 2015 (detail), oil and Liquin on linen. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased with the assistance of Prudence MacLeod 2016. © Jan Nelson / Copyright Agency
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KNOW MY NAME A landmark exhibition seeks to elevate the status of women artists in Australia, now and into the future. F E AT U R E b y DE B OR A H H A RT
Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now, at the National Gallery of Australia from 30 May, brings together a range of works by women and female-identifying artists that shed light on diverse ways of considering the stories of Australian art. Co-curated with Elspeth Pitt, with the assistance of Yvette Dal Pozzo, the exhibition has been conceived in thematic groupings, including portraiture, dynamism and abstraction, environment and place and collective and collaborative ways of working. An important aspect of the show is to reveal lineages between women across
time—in terms of direct connections and sources of inspiration as well as more open-ended links that suggest commonalities of practice and ways of seeing and thinking. While some of the artists are relatively well known, others less so, the exhibition seeks to retell the dynamics of Australian art through the work of women to find new meanings and possibilities. It aspires to make the art of women better known in the wider community, so that, when they are asked about those who have played a part in shaping the culture of this country, people will know the artists’ names. While the scope of the exhibition is expansive, this article provides insights into a spirit of interconnectedness that informed our selections. At the core of the installation is a reimagining of Micky Allan’s first solo exhibition, Photography, Drawing, Poetry: A Live-in Show of 1978, in which she brought art and domestic life into a space where people could sit, relax, reflect and talk, eschewing what she saw as the conventional ‘hush,
don’t speak’ formality of galleries. It epitomises a feeling for the democratisation of the arts that many women have yearned for over time. Allan’s body of work, including her pioneering handcoloured photographs, is informed by deeply personal responses to people, places and the cosmos and has a sense of inclusivity that speaks to the joys and vulnerabilities of human experience. Often working in series, her delicacy of touch is apparent in her portraits Babies 1976, which form part of her ongoing interest in the cycles of life. Other photographs included are from her rarely exhibited series The Pavilion of Death, Dreams and Desire: The Family Room 1982. While ambitious in scale, the series conveys an intimacy of connection with her subjects. Among the most powerful collective works in the exhibition is KangkuraKangkuraKu Tjukurpa—A Sister’s Story 2017 by the Ken Family Collective, or the ‘Ken sisters’: Tingila Yaritji Young, Maringka Tunkin, Sandra Ken, Freda Brady and Tjungkara Ken. They come
TOP Ken Family Collaborative: Freda Brady, Sandra Ken, Tjungkara Ken, Paniny Mick, Maringka Tunkin and Yaritji Young (Pitjantjatjara people) KangkuraKangkuraKu Tjukurpa—A Sister’s Story 2017, synthetic polymer paint on linen, three panels. Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, acquisition through Tarnanthi: Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art supported by BHP 2018. © Ken Family Collaborative
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from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in the far north-west of South Australia, and their painting refers to the Seven Sisters and Honey Ant dreamings, both of which are integral to their Country and community. Moving beyond the strictures of linear time, these women bring the understandings of a continuing culture into the present. They have a strong lineage that supports their collaborative work. As they said in an interview with Jack Latimer on NITV on 9 November 2018, ‘When we work together as a family, we are learning from each other and teaching each other. Our family is strong because we teach all our young women this important Tjukurpa— the force which unites Anangu with each other and with the landscape’. Counter to the idea of the individual, the dynamic of the painting conveys a profound shared feeling for Country and the stories that emanate from it. The idea of women’s lineages is also integral to Lola Greeno’s practice of creating intricate, iridescent shell necklaces. As a Tasmanian Aboriginal artist, she learned about threading shells from her mother, and her most keenly expressed dream is to keep her cultural heritage alive. Her necklaces may be considered portraits of her sense of being, connected with community. Similarly, shells shape Esme Timbery’s deeply moving work Shellworked slippers 2008, which emerges from the Indigenous practices of artists living at La Perouse at Botany Bay in Sydney. In painstakingly creating this installation of two hundred exquisite small velvet slippers adorned with shells, Timbery presents a poignant memorial to the many Aboriginal children who were part of the Stolen Generations forcibly removed by government edict from their families. The sorrow inflicted by this process is also implicit in Julie Dowling’s
LEFT Marie McMahon Pay the rent: you are on Aboriginal land [2] 1982, screenprint. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1993. © Marie McMahon
OPPOSITE Yvette Coppersmith Nude Self Portrait, after Rah Fizelle 2016, oil on linen. Private collection. © Yvette Coppersmith
KNOW MY NAME
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affecting portraits of her great grandmother Mary, a spiritual custodian of the Badimia people who had her two youngest children taken from her, including Dowling’s grandmother Mollie, who was placed in a Catholic orphanage at the age of 11 by her Irish father. As Dowling said to Gabriella Coslovich in The Age on 31 July 2007: ‘My mum was raised, by the (Catholic) church, to be a domestic servant and to marry white, just like my grandmother was. But when she started to read about civil rights and feminism she twigged that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and tried to find her own path’. In a spirit of reclamation in her work Mary 2001, Dowling depicts her great grandmother with considerable dignity, standing with a dingo and holding a goanna under an atmospheric sky, intrinsically connected with the land. The struggles for Aboriginal people have informed the work of artists across diverse cultural backgrounds. For instance, Marie McMahon’s poster Pay the rent: you are on Aboriginal land [2] 1982 was conceived after she had visited Tikilaru Country on Bathurst Island with one of its custodians, Piparo (Winnie Munkara). The work, in which Aboriginal woman Phillipa Pupangamirri firmly stands her ground, responds to white businessmen wanting to use the land for economic gain by building a resort. It is part of a large wall of posters in the exhibition that have been produced by women, including those working in poster collectives aimed at tackling issues such as racism and violence against women head on. Vivienne Binns has also tackled these concerns, independently and in her work in communities.
Her courage as a young artist in her twenties engaging with gender and sexuality—evident in bold works such as Vag dens 1967 and Phallic monument 1966—came at a time when feminism was growing in strength and censorship was rife. Like Pat Larter in her performative work, photographs, collages and ‘Femail Art’, Binns was unafraid to tackle and send up stereotypes and expectations of women in relation to depictions of the body. Larter, who turned the lens on women and men (mostly gay men, who she found liberating and who enjoyed posing for her), also focused on her own body, taking control of her own image, often with wry humour. In this vein, Julie Rrap’s series Persona and shadow 1984 reveals how depictions of women throughout
art history, such as those in the images of Edvard Munch (which she used as a starting point), have been made to adopt a series of roles. In a performative way, through her own body, she creates feelings of both dislocation and reclamation. Rrap finds humour in the provocation, and it is in the fearless and bold directness of her vision that she captivates our attention. An important aspect of the exhibition is the role of performance as a vital art form in women’s practice. Among the highlights is a new
‘… the exhibition seeks to retell the dynamics of Australian art through the work of women to find new meanings and possibilities, and aspires to make the art of women better known …’ performance work by dancer and choreographer Jo Lloyd, generously supported by Phillip Keir and Sarah Benjamin, remembering the work of the brilliant but largely forgotten Philippa Cullen, who died at the age of 25 in 1975. Cullen’s highly experimental dance work included using the theremin to generate sound. Lloyd’s performative approach will not recreate Cullen’s. Instead, she will bring her own remarkable vision and experience into close connection with the spirit of the earlier performance. In a sense, this project epitomises the idea of lineages in Know My Name, reminding us, as so many women artists do, that while personal endeavour is crucial so too is our interconnectedness across place and time. A special dimension of the exhibition is the selection of a palette by artist Gemma Smith for the gallery walls. Adopting an immensely subtle colour range, her approach has been collaborative and sensitive to the works on display. Her deep understanding of colour enables her to work with nuances of hues in the expansive architectural
TOP Rosemary Laing flight research #6 1999–2000, chromogenic photograph. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2001. © Rosemary Laing
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spaces that require and reward contemplative time from the viewer. In curating Know My Name, we are acutely aware that there are many more artists worthy of inclusion than we could possibly incorporate in a single exhibition. In this regard, it is important to note that this is one part of an ongoing program of exhibitions and other initiatives focusing on women artists at the National Gallery of Australia, both now and into the future. In endeavouring to convey some of the diverse stories
of women artists from 1900 to now, we also pay our respects to and acknowledge the work that others have done in this field over the years. Finally, we thank all the artists, collectors and institutions who have so generously loaned works and contributed in various ways to the exhibition and the initiative more broadly, revealing their commitment to redressing the imbalances of the past and foregrounding women artists in what is clearly a shared national project. Deborah Hart is Head of Australian Art, National Gallery of Australia. Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now will be on display at the National Gallery from 30 May to 13 September.
LEFT Vivienne Binns Vag dens 1967, synthetic polymer paint and enamel on composition board. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1978. © Vivienne Binns
KNOW MY NAME
‘MARY’S BLOOD NEVER FAILED ME’ Work by women in the national collection F E AT U R E b y NATA S H A B U L L O C K a n d E L S P E T H P I T T
The National Gallery of Australia is reassessing its approach to collecting work by women artists. A major focus of the National Gallery of Australia is the acquisition of work by women artists for its collection. Although the Gallery is home to many outstanding works by women, a gender imbalance in the collection persists. There are several reasons for this. The EuropeanAmerican bedrock of the collection, while the preeminent collection of its kind in Australia, has favoured a singular, male-dominated view of art history. Further, organising curatorial departments according to artistic media such as painting and sculpture, prints and drawings and photography has meant that materially fluid and experimental work, including early feminist art, has rarely been acquired. There has also been a discrepancy between what constitutes ‘high’ art
and ‘low’ art. In the past, craft and textile practices, typically employed by women, were considered ‘low’ art and not acquired with the same rigour as the ‘high’ arts of painting and sculpture, historically associated with men. The National Gallery of Australia’s future collecting will aim to redress imbalances such as these. Transforming established traditions and collections requires extensive research and relationship building with artists and artists’ estates. It is through such endeavours that the National Gallery of Australia recently acquired rare works by the Adelaide-born artist Frances (Budden) Phoenix, a feminist artist known for her textile assemblages and needlework. Much of her work was destroyed by fire in the early 1980s, although several examples including the Gallery’s acquisitions were unearthed in her estate. Central to Phoenix’s practice is needlework, a traditional form of ‘women’s work’ that she reclaimed, subverting its prettiness by embedding political refrains within it. The proclamation ‘Get your abortion laws off our bodies’, for example, is delicately picked out in a doily of the same title, made in
TOP Elizabeth Gower Then and now 1987, synthetic polymer paint on canvas. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1988. © Elizabeth Gower
THE NATIONAL COLLECTION
1980, alongside a woman defiantly raising her fist. Another work acquired by the Gallery, the textile assemblage Mary’s blood never failed me c 1977 was first exhibited in 1977 at the Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide in The Women’s Show, one of first exhibitions of women’s art to be held in Australia. In the 1970s, Phoenix worked as an assistant on North American artist Judy Chicago’s renowned installation The dinner party 1974–79. She became sceptical of Chicago’s form of ‘goddess worship’ feminism and, in an act of protest, roughly stitched the words ‘No goddesses, no mistresses’ on a piece of cloth that she concealed within the installation. Chicago is alleged to have later discovered Phoenix’s embroidery and to have cut its corner in anger. Karen Mazie Turner made vast cyanotypes on the roof of her Bondi flat. The most significant of these, Everyday life in the modern world, falling into TV c 1982 refers to her experience of being a new mother and having to contend with the great scatter of children’s toys and paraphernalia. In Turner’s art, ‘scatter’ becomes the subject, and, in this way, it resonates with
LEFT Mazie Karen Turner Everyday life in the modern world, falling into TV c 1982, cyanotype. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2019. © the estate of the artist
Elizabeth Gower’s paintings, including Then and now 1987, in which ostensibly abstract marks are slowly revealed as the jittery outlines of bottles, prams and chip packets. Women artists are often overshadowed by their male companions. Margaret Worth’s work was often eclipsed by that of her first husband, the abstract painter Sydney Ball. A former student of Ball’s at the South Australian School of Art in the 1960s, it is generally assumed that Worth adopted the language of hard-edge abstraction from Ball directly, but this is not the complete story. Art historian and curator Mary Eagle suggests that Ball’s and Worth’s practices evolved more collaboratively. Worth herself maintains that her most influential teacher was the artist Dora Chapman. This admission is fascinating since Chapman encouraged Worth to draw with her eyes closed in order to ‘feel’ her line. The rhythmic, weightless qualities of Worth’s art arguably descend from this instruction. Works are acquired for the national collection both for their individual strengths and for the ways they expand our understanding of art history. Conceptual art, which came to prominence in the 1960s, valued ideas over materials and forever changed how art was able to be made and imagined. Agatha Gothe-Snape explores and interrogates this legacy in wildly ambitious works that feature fleeting gestures, poetry and performance. Three physical doorways, one conceptual wedge and a gentle breeze 2017 is an ephemeral installation fabricated anew each time it is shown. Echoing the simplicity of a theatre set, the work conjures the possibility of entrances and exits, inviting the viewer through closed, partially a jar and open doorways. All histories are written from particular viewpoints. The mandate of the National Gallery of Australia is to enrich the national collection with exceptional works that challenge established narratives and represent the diversity and complexity of art. Natasha Bullock is Assistant Director, Curatorial and Exhibitions, National Gallery of Australia. Elspeth Pitt is Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture (20, 21C), National Gallery of Australia.
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BHENJI RA F E AT U R E b y S H AU N E L A K I N
Bhenji Ra’s practice combines dance, choreography, video, installation and club events. Her work is often concerned with dissecting social histories and identity, drawing on her own experiences as a trans person of Filipino descent. Sydney-based artist Bhenji Ra’s practice is deeply informed by who she is as a trans person of colour and her critical engagement with the ways that power structures— colonialism, patriarchy and capitalism —impact on identity and agency. Bhenji studied contemporary dance with the Martha Graham School in New York and then at the celebrated Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth. Recently, she has moved away from contemporary dance, to create complex performances and highly collaborative social spaces of inclusion, places for what she calls ‘radical togetherness’. In 2014, Bhenji formed the collective Club Ate with Justin Shoulder, who, like Bhenji, is a member of the queer diaspora and has Filipino ancestry. Club Ate has developed an interdisciplinary practice drawing on performance, moving image, installation, critical theory and social practice. While Club Ate works institutionally (including projects with major public collections nationally and internationally), they have maintained a close connection to their roots in Sydney’s queer club scene and the Asia–Pacific diaspora. From 28 February to 9 March, as part of the Enlighten Festival, Club Ate will illuminate the National Gallery of Australia’s facade with animated imagery elaborating ideas that they refer to as ‘Future folklore’. Projections will draw together indigenous Filipino creation myths, pop cultural references and a fluid, fantastical digital landscape—a TOP Bhenji Ra, Justin Shoulder and Tristan Jalleh anito | all idols 2017, digital photograph. Courtesy of the artists
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‘… a celebration of identity and connectedness, where dance, music and spectacle will help to build a community that encompasses gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age and politics.’ spectacular ‘skyworld’—to in effect ‘queer’ the building’s monumental, brutalist concrete structure. The projections will be accompanied on Saturday 7 March by the inclusive, collaborative performance and club event Club Muva. This will be Canberra’s first experience of one of Club Ate’s legendary Sissy Balls that, since 2015, have opened up spaces of, according to Bhenji and Justin, ‘infinite possibility for queer and diasporic communities to connect, communicate and transmutate’. Club Muva will be a celebration of OPPOSITE Nan Goldin Cookie at Tin Pan Alley, NYC 1983. Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery New York, Paris and London
identity and connectedness, where dance, music and spectacle will help to build a community that encompasses gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age and politics. Club Muva will form part of a century-old genealogy of events in which queer people have used dance, performance, music, costume and spectacle to stake out a space of community and resistance. It coincides with the thirtieth anniversary of Jennie Livingston’s film Paris is burning, a groundbreaking account of Harlem’s drag-ball scene during the late 1980s, a scene that Club Ate actively mines and revises. Livingston’s film documents a scene in which poor, queer African-Americans and Latinos ‘impersonate’—through dance, costume and performance—certain
social roles—straight, economically successful, usually white—to momentarily carve out a space of power and privilege (themes also developed recently in the hugely popular television series Pose). A captivating aspect of the Harlem drag balls was that the various ‘houses’ that competed against each other during them were each ruled by a ‘mother’ or ‘father’, or both, who looked after their ‘children’, replicating the structure and language of a biological family. Today, Bhenji is mother of the House of Slé, whose children perform at Sissy Balls. But, in place of the patriarchal and colonial gender dynamics of the ‘houses’ we see in Paris is burning (in which idealisations of femininity tend to be of ruling-class white women), Bhenji’s family, her ‘house’, is radically intersectional in structure, drawing together the queer Asia–Pacific diaspora, Filipino kinship systems and transgender identities common to the precolonial Asia–Pacific region. Bhenji speaks beautifully about her mothering, about the ways she nurtures her children through transition and the joys and complications of queerness. In an article for un Magazine last year, she wrote: ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about how survival is often linked to collectivity, specifically for people of colour, specifically for myself as a trans person of colour who owes so much of my survival to the collectives I’ve belonged to and the communities that have held me’. Club Muva will bring this potentially ‘radical togetherness’ to the National Gallery of Australia for one night on 7 March. Shaune Lakin is Head of International Art, National Gallery of Australia. Club Ate: In Muva We Trust will illuminate the National Gallery’s facade from 28 February to 9 March 8–11 pm. Celebrating community and connections through movement, sound and storytelling, Club Muva will be held for one night only on 7 March 3 pm to late.
BHENJI RA
NAN GOLDIN F E AT U R E b y A N N E O ’ H E H I R
As part of its Know My Name initiative, the National Gallery of Australia presents The Body Electric, an exhibition drawing together photo and video work made by woman-identifying artists on the subjects of sex, pleasure and desire. Anne O’Hehir highlights American artist Nan Goldin, whose work since the 1970s has had far-reaching social impacts. Historically, photography and, more
recently, video have played a pivotal and determining role in the way sex and sexuality are seen in society. Images of women by heterosexual men for heterosexual men dominate this history, although many women artists have also sought to capture their intimacy, desire and sexuality and, at the same time, critique the assumed norm presented by their male counterparts. It is the work of these women that The Body Electric, a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia from 28 March,
NAN GOLDIN
will bring out of the shadows as part of the Know My Name initiative. Without a doubt one of the most important contributors to this project has been the American photographer Nan Goldin, who has been working since the 1970s. In the 1996 book Nan Goldin: I’ll be your mirror, curator Elisabeth Sussman described Goldin as ‘the impassioned historian of love in the age of fluid sexuality, glamour, beauty, violence, death, intoxication, and masquerade’. Four examples of Goldin’s intensely autobiographical, intimate photographic record of her life and loves are on display in The Body Electric. The images are from her series The ballad of sexual dependency, a photographic diary made over fifteen years and featuring her friends and lovers, her ‘tribe’, as she calls them. The series, which originally included over 900 images—presented as a slide show with an accompanying soundtrack (from Maria Callas to the Velvet Underground)—is widely regarded as one of the most moving and affecting bodies of work in the photographic canon. It records
Goldin’s immersion in the subcultures that made up the Lower East Side club scene of the 1970s and 1980s—a life of sleeping by day and photographing by night, a life of love and loss, joy and tragedy. The wide success of The ballad of sexual dependency, beyond the accolades of the arts industry, can be attributed largely to its candidness. Although intimate, the series is never voyeuristic and never staged. The camera was simply always with her, and the moments she captured followed two cardinal rules: 1) not to change what she was witnessing and 2) not to shoot anything she wouldn’t be happy being photographed doing herself. All of her work, Goldin tells us, comes from a place of love and empathy. It explores the tension between autonomy and interdependence in relationships—how difficult it is for men and women to find a common language. This is key to understanding the work as intended. A work never made from the perspective of an outsider, never about marginalised people. A work that
asks, even demands, radical acceptance. Much of Goldin’s energy is now spent spearheading a political campaign aimed at calling to account arts and academic institutions who are complicit in accepting money from the Sackler family, who she sees as irresponsibly fostering opioid addiction. Her activism in this area is reaping benefits, with many major public institutions turning away substantial levels of Sackler support. She also continues to caretake and speak about her life’s work, which she continues to reassess and re-present, and will be coming to the National Gallery of Australia in July to take part in a Know My Name conference. Anne O’Hehir is Curator, Photography, National Gallery of Australia. The Body Electric will be on display at the National Gallery of Australia from 28 March to 20 September. Nan Goldin will be in discussion with Australian novelist, screenwriter, art critic and editor Jennifer Higgie during a two-day conference, Know My Name: Women and Art in the 21st Century, at the National Gallery of Australia from 10 to 11 July.
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Margaret Worth is an artist who epitomises the Know My Name initiative. Although her practice has at times been obscured and challenged, her pioneering work in the fields of abstraction and environmental art is at last gaining greater recognition. I N T E RV I E W b y E L S P E T H P I T T
Margaret, I’d like to ask how you came to art and how you came to be an artist. Was art something that presented itself to you, or was it something you worked to find? I’ve loved art from childhood. However, it was not an option for me in a ‘streamed’ education. In first-year university, studying science and education, I crossed paths with students doing art and education. I immediately applied for a transfer and, following three days of tests and interviews, succeeded. You initially studied at the South Australian School of Art in Adelaide. Could you say something about what it was like to be a student there? What classes did you take and who did you study with? In the 1960s, the art school was a custom-design building in a leafy inner suburb. The relationship between students and lecturers was free-flowing, with a pub across the road for after-class socialising. It was an exciting period of change. The old guard of European artist-teachers was taken over by the new guard of English and American artists, as well as Australians who had recently returned from overseas. For me, the teachers who made a substantial difference were Dora Chapman in life drawing, Geoff Wilson in design and, for my final year, Syd Ball in painting.
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MARGARET WORTH
You’ve recently written a very beautiful piece about Chapman, who you refer to as your most influential teacher. There is so little written about her, and yet her early abstract paintings are very tough. There’s an implicit steeliness and resolve that propels and fortifies them. While you were a student, were you aware that she was an artist in her own right? No, I wasn’t. It was a loss not to know her also as an artist. Dora was aware, uncompromising and clear-thinking in her teaching as well as her art. She is remembered by colleagues and students with respect and high regard, in spite of, and because of, her forthright style. You met your husband, Sydney Ball, at art school. You both worked in the vein of hard-edge abstraction but how did you distinctively inflect this shared language? Colour as energy was the driving force in my work. The compositions were pared down to energy patterns. I incorporated three dimensions to make colour an object as well as subject, and embraced it as a means of transcendence to purity. Could you say something about the NGV exhibition The Field? Historically, it has come to be recognised as an event that symbolised Australia’s growing cultural sophistication and the increasing mobility and internationalism of its artists. Although, in recent years, the exhibition’s clear gender bias has been much remarked on. What was your impression of this exhibition at the time? I experienced the exhibition as a ‘boys club’ event. When John Stringer, the curator, was making the selections in Adelaide, he visited Syd and me at our home. My first understanding was that only artists with established reputations were to be included. I realised later that artists whom I regarded as equals were represented. I wondered why I had been excluded. I saw that Syd’s painting in the exhibition was very similar to an earlier one of mine. It might have been why Stringer did not visit my studio. I wish I had pressed him, but I was conflicted by public perceptions and personal conviction. I missed the national significance of the exhibition. You spent close to two decades in the United States. Could you outline what you did there and who you worked with? In the first year, I attended the School of Visual Arts on West 20 th Street in New York. Lucy Lippard, Richard Serra and Donald Judd were the instructors who made the greatest impression. Visits to Judd’s studio on Broome Street demonstrated what a professional practice looks like. A photographic project with Lippard was published in Art International. And a personal challenge from Serra is still with me today. In 1969, Serra took my canvas panels and wood bars into a large space, where he propped, leaned and stacked them precariously.
He was excited and I was sceptical. He challenged my aim for purity with chaos and disharmony. At the time, our roles as artists seemed worlds apart. Now, I see them as similar. At a studio on Broome Street, I had a job producing screenprints for artists, including Robert Rauschenberg and Sol LeWitt. I admired LeWitt, even more so when I worked at his direction on the Composite Series. He was disciplined and meticulous, and the only artist to give me a set of signed proofs. I graduated from Columbia University with a Master Degree in Fine Art in 1972. There, art history came alive and into the present. In 1973, when Clement Meadmore asked me to take over his class in 3D design at Parsons School of Design, I jumped at the chance. It was for one year, and valuable in developing my sense of space and placement. Following, I freelanced across a range of jobs. In 1977 and 1978, I taught painting for Sarah Lawrence College at their International Summer School in France. As a young mother, I taught drawing at Columbia-Greene Community College in New York and subcontracted for a series of mechanical drawings for the US Air Force. I also did illustrations for Macmillan Publishing in an encyclopedia and a monthly education magazine.
‘I had to face the question of which would take priority, motherhood or art, and decided on motherhood. What I didn’t anticipate was that it meant discontinuing a career as an artist.’
TOP Margaret Worth Sukhavarti number 5 1967, synthetic polymer paint. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of Dr Pamela Faye McGrath 2020. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program. © Margaret Worth OPPOSITE Margaret Worth preparing her work VAJRASANA meditation 2018 for the Lorne Sculpture Biennale, 2018. Photo: Eamon Gallagher
Could you comment on your experience of motherhood and how it affected and influenced your art practice? I had to face the question of which would take priority, motherhood or art, and decided on motherhood. What I didn’t anticipate was that it meant discontinuing a career as an artist. Subsequently, I embarked on a career of services and collaboration, integrating art and culture into the planning and design of public places. I don’t regret the decision and, now, the human experience is key to all my concept development. In recent years you have made site-specific wind instruments and sound installations. Is there a connection between this kind of work and your earlier abstractions? There appears to be a purity or a very refined elemental distillation underpinning both. Yes, the energies of movement and sound are like the energies of colour and light. As in the early works, I aim for the simplest possible presentation. And finally, how do you see colour, how do you put it to work and what has it given you? Colour can be imagined in pure form but experienced only through material reflection. Together with lived experience, the physics, the psychology and art theories of colour all inform my use of it. Colour was my first love, followed by movement and sound. As pure abstractions they transcend lived reality. Imagination creates a pathway between them. Elspeth Pitt is Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture (20, 21C), National Gallery of Australia. Margaret Worth is an Australian artist whose work is in Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now at the National Gallery from 30 May.
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KNOW MY NAME? DO YOU
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SALLY SMART
Because we need leadership, and it has to be unequivocal leadership with guiding mechanisms for structural change. And that’s what’s really exciting about this exhibition and this initiative. It’s not just for women artists, it’s for the whole of culture. It’s critical for other communities. It’s critical for multiple communities in our society to recognise that, through our engagement in progressing equality for women artists, we activate broadly, in our own sector and beyond, to make visible, to demonstrate the process, the decisions, really clear decisions, about how we are implementing change. The National Gallery of Australia can be in a guiding and practicing leadership position. You could call it the ripple effect? Absolutely. Even around the language and what it looks like, I think that’s always really important. From language, we have education, and we have young school students and groups coming in from all across the country. We need the whole of culture on this, not just young women or women artists. We need young men and men. We must bring everyone with us. We have a platform of communication that’s critical,
SALLY SMART Sally Smart is one of Australia’s most significant artists. With a career spanning decades, she has a long-held interest in the ways in which women have been represented in history, art and literature. She joined the National Gallery of Australia’s Council last year and is a member of the Know My Name Project Board. Natasha Bullock sat down with her to discuss why the time has come to acknowledge women artists and women in the arts across all fields, and why Know My Name is a campaign for all time. IN TERV IEW by NATA SH A BU L LOCK
educational language, that is everyday In 1971, American art historian
language through art, meaningful
Linda Nochlin wrote her pioneering
for everybody. It’s then that we can build
article ‘Why have there been no great
points of connection.
women artists?’ She comprehensively outlined the bias of white male privilege
Know My Name includes a number of
that has dominated western art discourse
initiatives that speak to a set of guiding
over the centuries. Sally, do you think
principles that will establish a direction for
much has changed?
the National Gallery of Australia’s future
Nochlin went on to write that the reason
programming and for the structure of its
was one, the bias, and two, the opportunities.
organisation and how we can achieve gender
Women artists were there, but they weren’t
equity at a leadership level. The initiative
given the opportunities to be able to show
includes a suite of activities, including
that they were there, and then they couldn’t
large exhibitions, a major publication
sustain their practice because they were
about women and written by women,
not visible. They were not recognised
commissions, an international conference,
because of bias and because of patriarchy.
a Wiki-thon to build the existing profile of
Yes, some things have changed but not a
women artists on Wikipedia, a national art
lot because this is still an issue. We are still,
event that will present the work of women
in 2020, having discussions about why it
artists across Australia on billboards and
takes so long for women to be recognised.
other assets. What is your hope once all of
The recognition is getting there, but it is
this rolls out?
not when women are younger. Why is that?
For the National Gallery of Australia, this
We still have more women graduating from
initiative must be ongoing. What does that
art school. We know that there is an impact
look like? That looks like major exhibitions
that happens when women have a family,
with women, solo exhibitions that really
we do know that that’s an issue.
tell the story of that woman artist’s work,
There are other impacts, always in
and the criticality of that work. It is not just
human being’s lives, around why something
about the numbers and names, it’s about the
may take longer, or a financial impact
value the institution gives to an artist’s work.
or a health impact or a human impact.
That includes the critical contextual material
People have been through wars, artists
such as publications, visual documentation
went through many, through the twentieth
and the space allocated to the presentation
century, incredible trauma. And so,
of her work.
it’s not that, is it? That isn’t the reason.
This approach will be generative.
Instead, the issue is that it is tied up
The more visible and more complex it is,
with value and commercial markets.
then the whole ecology of art can be valued.
So, in the end, it’s patriarchy (and the
It’s not going to happen naturally, there
impeding structures) that hasn’t changed.
are preconditioned unconscious biases in a system that has shrouded women’s work.
It’s a sad indictment on society if not much
There is now a global momentum toward
has changed. What you’ve outlined provides
gender equality broadly, and specifically
some of the reasons why and also shows
in the arts with various international
why we have to push hard into deeper
initiatives growing awareness. I think
more structural and societal change.
this momentum is timely and important
As you know, the Know My Name initiative is
to harness.
driven from a real desire to tackle the issues. While it originally found its genesis in an exhibition, it has come to represent something greater and more ideologically far-reaching. The project is structural and organisational and will permeate all aspects of the National Gallery of TOP Sally Smart in her iteration of NGA Play, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2019.
Australia’s internal and external activities from 2020 onwards. Sally, why do you think it’s important for the National Gallery of Australia to lead this initiative?
We all have to be in this, individually,
‘… that’s what’s really exciting about this exhibition, this campaign, this initiative. It’s not just for women artists, it’s for the whole of culture.’
and as a gallery. The National Gallery of Australia is absolutely committed to this and in terms of leadership, clearly and concisely with language and contextualisation, Know My Name promises to be brilliant. Natasha Bullock is Assistant Director, Curatorial and Exhibitions, National Gallery of Australia. Sally Smart is an Australian artist and member of the National Gallery of Australia’s Council and Know My Name Project Board.
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ALL ABOUT WOMEN An iconic festival
I N T E RV I E W b y S A M A N T H A JON E S
For the past eight years, the Sydney Opera House has presented All About Women, a festival of ideas, talks, panels and workshops. The National Gallery of Australia’s Samantha Jones spoke to organiser Dr Edwina Throsby, Head of Talks and Ideas at the Sydney Opera House, about the upcoming program and her take on the pulse of feminism today. As All About Women enters its eighth year, what have been some of the highlights and challenges of the festival that you can reflect on? I first programmed All About Women in 2018, and each festival brings so many highlights. Watching writer Fran Lebowitz struggle with the no smoking rules at the Sydney Opera House, talking about beauty with Rebecca Walker and nature with Barbara Kingsolver. But, more than anything, watching wonderful
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people from all over the world come together to talk about the issues that affect us all, and everyone making connections that will last for life. What are you most excited about in the All About Women 2020 program? Don’t make me choose a favourite! I love this festival, it’s such a joyous celebration. But here we go … I’m really thrilled that we’re launching a whole new film program this year. Cinema is a place that is alive with feminist activity and critique, and it’s great to be part of that. As well, we’re featuring the work of some really interesting young artists: Hannah Brontë, Stanislava Pinchuk and Atong Atem. And, this year, we have a strong STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) strand, with wonderful talks about astrophysics, neuroscience and technology. What’s your read on where feminism is at right now? Are we in the midst
of a golden age of global activism and collective power? I’d love to think that were the case. But, while I do think that #metoo has catalysed a major shift in feminism (now many women are more likely to speak up and actually be heard), globally, we still have a long, long way to go. Across cultures, the situation for women and girls is frequently pretty grim. There’s violence, abuse, unequal access to money, education and opportunity. As feminists, we can’t afford to be complacent. There’s been a focus globally in celebrating women in the arts and bringing more content and stories by women forward. What do you attribute this to? You can only keep true talent shut in a box for so long. It was inevitable that, at some point, there would be
TOP Edwina Throsby. Photo: Yaya Stempler
a public recognition of the great and often hidden work of female artists throughout history, and I’m super excited that this is happening in my lifetime. Surfacing work that had been neglected, sidelined or ignored is a hugely important mission, as it creates a proud foundation for contemporary female artists to build on. The next step is to have these women recognised in the canon, or, better still, have the outdated and patriarchal notion of a canon abandoned altogether. Samantha Jones is Head of Partnerships, National Gallery of Australia. Edwina Throsby is Head of Talks and Ideas, Sydney Opera House. sydneyoperahouse.com/all-about-women
THE COUNTESS REPORT 2019 An excerpt from the 2019 Countess Report, an artist-led initiative run by Amy Prcevich, Elvis Richardson and Miranda Samuels, which publishes annually statistics on gender representation in the Australian art sector.
In 2016, the first Countess Report was released, with the financial support of The SHEILA Foundation. It revealed in detail what the Countess blogspot first started reporting in 2008—that an imbalance of power existed in the Australian art world. Men held more positions at senior levels and male artists were significantly better represented across the sector, despite 75% of art school graduates being female. Skip forward to 2019, and our updated report chronicles key changes in the sector between 2014 and 2018. Following on from the wide community uptake of the 2016 report, the Countess team spent the last two years engaging with the arts community through workshops and roundtables. Our aim with this community engagement was to understand what and where conversations on gender should be focused on, both now and in the future. The key issues and points of contention that were highlighted have informed our methodology and the writing of The Countess Report, 2019. Notably, the inclusion of an additional gender category to account for non-binary artists. We have attempted to respond to the community’s concerns as best we could with the resources available however we acknowledge there is important work to be done in better understanding the data within the broader context of race and class issues. It is worth highlighting that since the last report was released discussions about gender representation in various sectors of the arts have worked their way into the mainstream. We believe this has created a renewed interest from major institutions in dealing with issues of gender inequity in the Australian arts sector. Countess will continue to keep watch in the coming years to make sure this is not a passing trend. In recent years, institutions have invited us into their spaces, their projects, their programs. The more frequently we are invited into these spaces the most strongly we believe that offering an artistic output affords us the ability to construct a critical distance. The Countess Report, 2019 was supported by SHEILA Foundation.
THE RESULTS
In a sentence: the representation of women has significantly improved. We counted over 13,000 artists across 184 institutions. This is undeniably a healthy sample size. The category of non-binary artist was included for the first time, and we now have a benchmark for non-binary representation within the sector.
WE CAN REPORT THAT
• 71% of art school graduates are women. • There was an increase in the representation of women artists of between 10–20% across artist run spaces, commercial galleries, contemporary art organisations, public galleries, major museums and university galleries.
• State galleries and museums continue to significantly under-represent women in their collections and exhibitions. • In State galleries and museums, the representation of women decreased from 36.9% to 33.9% from 2016 to today. • Non-binary artists were represented at 1–2% across the sector, with no non-binary artists recorded in curated state gallery exhibitions in 2018. • 52% of art prize winners were women, with the top ten prizes (in dollar value) being a 50/50 split.
THE ANALYSIS
So why this significant swing of the pendulum in Australia, and why now? Particularly when we note that overseas data often reflects little or no change in representation. We do like to credit the conversations stirred by the 2016 report as being an agent for change. The swift change across most of the sector may be attributed to the ability of commercial galleries ARIs and so on to be responsive to the zeitgeist due to their typically short-lead, year-out planning; as opposed to state galleries and museums who typically have longer lead times. The impact of an increased public consciousness around gender may have resulted in individual staff, organisations and boards actively making decisions to exhibit and engage more women and non-binary artists. The increase in funding from 52% to 60% for female artists may be linked to the increase in representation across the sector, that has lead to more fundable projects. The Countess Report remains cautious that the 2019 results are not merely a spike. We don’t think data collection is obsolete. As such we will continue to track statistics in coming years to watch for evidence of dwindling representation. To find out more about the Countess Report, go to countess.report.
LEFT Countess.Report (Amy Prcevich, Elvis Richardson, Miranda Samuels) SPOILING ILLUSIONS SINCE 2008 2020, digital image for print
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NATIONAL ART EVENT i n PA RT N E R S H I P w i t h O OH ! M E DI A
A first-of-its-kind partnership brings the work of women artists into the public sphere like never before. For six weeks from 24 February, over 1500 billboards and digital-signage outlets across metro and regional Australia are featuring images of works by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian women artists from the national collection, potentially reaching more than twelve million Australians. The result of a major partnership with oOh!media, Australia’s largest outdoor advertising company, the project brings both historical and contemporary works by forty-five significant Australian women artists into the lives of everyday Australians, turning advertising space into a temporary art gallery. The initiative is aimed at increasing access to the National Gallery of Australia’s collection and educating the broader public about the contributions of women artists to Australian cultural life.
IN OOH!MEDIA’S WORDS …
Billboards from the ‘National art event’ launch in Melbourne, 21 February 2020, featuring works from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra: ABOVE Judy Watson (Waanyi people) red rock 1998. Gordon Darling Australasian Print Fund 1999. © Judy Watson / Copyright Agency RIGHT TOP Hilda Rix Nicholas An Australian woman 1926. Purchased 2014. © Bronwyn Wright
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Our partnership with the National Gallery of Australia for the Know My Name initiative has become a purpose driven project for the team at oOh!. We are a diverse team of passionate individuals driven to make public spaces better and thrilled to be involved in such a pioneering partnership supporting a vital movement for equality and embracing the arts. Spearheading the project are a strong team of women, including Nikki Ronald and Vanessa Ackland, who are leading curation and design for display across oOh!’s network. Nikki and Vanessa have worked to ensure that artists’ works are respected during the creative process and that the formats we use enhance the experience of seeing the works in an urban environment. As leaders in Out of Home technology and innovation, oOh!media is well placed to provide a powerful platform to the Know My Name initiative. We are deeply honoured to present this stellar art event across our network, giving female artists the exposure they deserve and all Australians the opportunity to access and appreciate their work.
ARTISTS : JEAN BAPTISTE CLUB ATE / GRACE COSSIN JANET DAWSON / EX DE ME GOODSIR / FIONA HALL / M JERREMS / MABEL JULI / KNGWARREYE / YVONNE KO / TRACEY MOFFATT / ANN NE / MARGARET PRESTON / T ROBYN STACEY / JUDY WAT
E APUATIMI / DEL KATHRYN BARTON / DORRIT BLACK / DORA CHAPMAN / NGTON SMITH / OLIVE COTTON / GRACE CROWLEY / VIRGINIA CUPPAIDGE / EDICI / LESLEY DUMBRELL / CHERINE FAHD / ANNE FERRAN / SUE FORD / AGNES MELINDA HARPER / JOY HESTER / NORA HEYSEN / NAOMI HOBSON / CAROL MIRDIDINGKINGATHI JUWARNDA SALLY GABORI / INGE KING / EMILY KAME OOLMATRIE / ROSEMARY LAING / NONGGIRRNGA MARAWILI / SANNÉ MESTROM EWMARCH / MARGARET OLLEY / POLIXENI PAPAPETROU / PATRICIA PICCININI THEA PROCTOR / HILDA RIX NICHOLAS / SALLY SMART / ETHEL SPOWERS / TSON / MARGARET WORTH / NYAPANYAPA YUNUPINGU / ANNE ZAHALKA 17
TAKING KNOW MY NAME ACROSS AUSTRALIA The National Gallery of Australia is a collection for the nation, which means taking Know My Name on the road. F E AT U R E b y J E S S I E NGL A N D a n d M A RY-L OU N UGE N T
When Know My Name was launched in May 2019, it was with an invitation to celebrate creative women everywhere and for people to share the stories of the creative women in their communities. Nationally, artists and creative women across the cultural sector welcomed the call for equal power, equal respect and recognition for female creators. Significantly, regionally based artists, artist collectives and arts organisation have been among the most active adopters of Know My Name. As part of the launch of Know My Name, the National Gallery of Australia commissioned two T-shirts in partnership with Art Girl Rising, an international creative endeavour that aims to spark conversations and raise awareness of gender inequity in the arts. These shirts featured the first names of ten Australian women artists. In solidarity, and
as a ‘Town Camp’ homage, Alice Springs-based art centre Tangentyere Artists created its own version, which features the names of six local Indigenous artists. Where the Art Girl Rising shirts had included ‘Grace’ Cossington Smith and ‘Thea’ Proctor, the Tangentyere shirt included ‘Grace’ Kemarre Robinya and ‘Thea’ Anamara Perkins as well as fellow artists Betty Conway, Doris Thomas, Nyinta Donald and Sally M Mulda. The six artists exhibited together at the Tarnanthi festival in Adelaide last year, premiering the shirt as part of their participation. Women artists who live in regional Australia have observed the industry’s biases, not only against women but also against women who, by choice or circumstance, live in regional or rural locations. Even if their work is embraced within their own
communities and collected by regional institutions, accomplished career artists speak of the difficulties they experience in gaining opportunities, in both the commercial and public institution realms, in the city centres where the majority of professional and career-defining activities take place. The Reimagining the Canon collective is an international initiative of women in art comprised of nineteen artists and academics from Australia, Ireland and England. From 23 October to 17 November 2019, the group held its inaugural self-titled exhibition at the University of Newcastle’s gallery. According to curator and participating artist Annemarie Murland, the exhibition’s rationale was ‘to deliver a grassroots “local” perspective on how the canon [of western art] might look when viewed through a female lens’. Opened by internationally regarded artist Virginia Cuppaidge, now based in Newcastle, the exhibition was positively reviewed and a huge success with local audiences. The collective was buoyed by Know My Name’s intentions and utilised #knowmyname throughout the exhibition’s development and public presentation. Murland writes, ‘campaigns like #knowmyname play a vital role in developing and shining a light on women artists and their projects and their contribution to Australian culture’. These are just a couple of examples of the myriad of artist and gallery projects that are aligned with or inspired by Know My Name and the broad global movement toward highlighting the art and experiences of women. The National Gallery of Australia hopes to inspire more and more responses, big and small, as it continues to promote the many facets of the Know My Name initiative, including the many exhibitions it has planned for both Canberra and regionally through its touring exhibition program.
LEFT Thea Anamara Perkins in front of her portrait of Sally M Mulda and paintings by Mulda at the Art Gallery of South Australia for Tarnanthi 2019. Photo: Saul Steed
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Already touring nationally is Terminus, a work in the national collection by New Zealand artist Jess Johnson and her collaborator Simon Ward. Commissioned with funds provided by The Balnaves Foundation, the work will be at the Plimsoll Gallery in Tasmania from 13 March. The National Gallery of Australia’s partnership with oOh!Media is another example. Launched in February, the partnership sees many billboards, bus stops and digital screens in both metro and regional Australia populated with art by women to promote awareness of their work, and names, among millions of commuters. Patricia Piccinini’s new hot-air balloon Skywhalepapa 2020, commissioned as part of The Balnaves Contemporary Series, and its earlier companion Skywhale 2013, now part of the national collection, will also be touring Australia later this year, after their unveiling in Canberra. From 2021 to 2022, the National Gallery of Australia is also proposing a national tour associated with Know My Name and featuring the work of between sixty and seventy of the key artists in its Know My Name exhibition in Canberra from 30 May. The tour of Know My Name will encourage collaborations with local venues to raise the profile and impact of the work of local women artists beyond the exhibition period, by displaying works from their own collections or curating complementary exhibitions along similar themes and developing public programs that appeal to and engage local audiences. Participating artists will be engaged to present talks and workshops associated with Know My Name, loans from the national collection will be made available and assistance will be provided on a curatorial perspective to realise the goals of this historic initiative. Jessi England is Program and Campaign Manager, Know My Name, National Gallery of Australia. Mary-Lou Nugent is Manager, Travelling Exhibitions, National Gallery of Australia.
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2020 Gala Chef
CHRISTINE MANFIELD WOR D S b y S OP H I A H A L L OWAY
R ECIPE by CH R IST I N E M A N FIEL D
ROASTED FLATHEAD, CONFIT TOMATOES AND GREEN HARISSA 3 whole flathead, scaled, cleaned, heads removed 600 g cocktail truss tomatoes 600 ml extra virgin olive oil 6 garlic cloves, finely sliced 1 tbsp fennel seeds Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 2 tbsp fennel fronds 3 tbsp chervil leaves 3 tbsp coriander leaves, rough chopped
CHRISTINE MANFIELD As a trailblazer of contemporary fine dining, Australian chef Christine Manfield came to prominence in the 1990s, in an industry dominated by men. She was a restaurateur, heading up both Paramount and Universal in Sydney, and a pioneer of Modern Asian at East@West in London. Her diverse portfolio includes several award-winning books, culinary pop-up events in Australia and abroad and bespoke culinary adventures to international destinations such as India, Italy, South America, Bhutan, France, Spain, Morocco and New Zealand. She is also a mentor and actively champions women in the hospitality industry by lending her experience to young practitioners looking to hone their craft. Now without a restaurant, she is a free agent and has agreed to be the guest chef at the National Gallery of Australia’s annual fundraising Gala dinner on 21 March. She has also created a special recipe for Artonview readers to try out this autumn: ‘Roasted flathead, confit tomatoes and green harissa’. Enjoy!
GREEN HARISSA 3 long green chillies, chopped 2 garlic cloves, chopped 30 g parsley leaves 30 g coriander leaves 2 tsp ground coriander seeds 2 tsp ground cumin seeds ¼ tsp ground cardamom 1 tsp ground black pepper 2 tsp sea salt flakes ½ tsp caster sugar 2 tsp minced lemon zest 125 ml extra virgin olive oil
Serves 6
Preheat oven to 200°C. Combine tomatoes with oil, garlic, fennel seeds and pepper in a wide saucepan for a snug fit, so that tomatoes are covered. Cover surface with a piece of baking paper to keep tomatoes submerged. Cook over very low heat on stove top for 1 hour, stirring occasionally, until tender. Take off heat and set aside. In a food processor, or with a stick blender, blend all harissa ingredients together to make a smooth paste. Set aside. Rub the fish trunks liberally with some of the tomato cooking oil. Season with salt and pepper. Heat a large non-stick pan over medium-high heat. Lay the fish top and tail and with skin-side down, belly facing up. Cook for 3 minutes then flip the fish over and cook for another 2 minutes. Transfer the pan to the oven and bake for 5–6 minutes or until fish is just cooked through. Remove the fish from the oven and carefully transfer them to serving plates. Scatter the confit tomatoes over and around the fish and spoon on a few dollops of green harissa. Scatter the herbs over and serve.
Sophia Halloway is Development Officer, National Gallery of Australia. Recipe: © Christine Manfield 2020
ABOVE Selina Snow Christine Manfield 1997, synthetic polymer paint on canvas. National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, gift of the artist 1999. © Selina Snow
Christine Manfield’s ‘Roasted flathead, confit tomatoes and green harissa’, served on Mud Australia handmade porcelain. Photo: Alan Benson
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QUENTIN BRYCE DAME
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DAME QUENTIN BRYCE
Dame Quentin Bryce has enjoyed a rich and distinguished career as an academic, lawyer, community and human rights advocate, senior public officer, university college principal, and vice-regal representative in Queensland and for Australia. She has worked with women, families and young people while extending her influence across broad and diverse spectrums, including the rural, regional, aged, Indigenous, migrant and disability sectors. She remains a pioneer in contemporary Australian society, with more than forty-five years of experience in reform, community building and leadership. IN TERV IEW by A L ISON K U BL ER
OPPOSITE Lorrie Graham Quentin Bryce 2000, gelatin silver photograph (printed 2011), National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. © Lorrie Graham
How did your love of art come about? My sisters and I were very lucky to have parents who enjoyed and appreciated art and took us to the Queensland Art Gallery when we visited the city. I remember the very first time I went there, tucking my hand into my mother’s and walking into the grand entrance of the Queensland Museum Building in Bowen Hills where the gallery was before 1982. She whispered to me about the paintings and the sculpture. I could describe some of them in detail to you now. They made a deep impression on me, as did some of the lovely old-fashioned prints we had on our walls at home—[John] Constables, mills and farms, ballet dancers, scenes from Venice. Later in life, Michael (my husband) has played a constant and significant role in developing my understanding and love of art. He is a brilliant companion in a gallery with a broad knowledge across a lifetime of practice as an architect and designer. His father, Tom, was an artist whose cartoons of army life in the Pacific in the Second World War were published in The Bulletin. As Governor of Queensland and as Governor-General, I valued the privilege of being guided through exhibitions by gallery directors and curators, enriching learning experiences. Oh so many stories of art and artists to treasure. One of the most dear was meeting you at QUT Art Museum when you were there. I remember very well the show The Brisbane Line, which you had curated, the work of women artists like Bessie Gibson and Vida Lahey, whose names were familiar to me but, generally speaking, little known. Your descriptions of their work, talking, telling me stories, pointing out various aspects, one to one, face to face, answering my questions—a cherished memory. It was special for me too. I thought they were amazing artists, but I didn’t understand the real sacrifice they made. It’s only after I’ve had children that I really appreciate how difficult it is to maintain an artistic career and be a mother. One thing you said to me when we first talked about Know My Name is that it can’t be a temporary thing, because these things come up all the time and then they’re finished with and done, and then we do it all again ten years later. Yes, there is the risk of the ‘tick a box’ syndrome. After years of hard work towards reform, we move on to the next challenge with a well-earned sense of satisfaction that we have achieved what we set out to do—developing the policy, getting the legislation through, establishing the programs. But it is also vital to monitor progress constantly to ensure that implementation is carried out to the full, so we don’t run the risk of reinventing the wheel. The follow through is critical. I’ve seen that again and again in reforms in women’s employment and education, for example, in sexual harassment and criminal justice. I was really shocked when you said to me how poor the knowledge of women artists is in Australia, especially when I look back on efforts in the 1970s to lift their profile and publish their art and their histories.
Know My Name is absolutely a project for longevity, for now and forever. The National Gallery of Australia has incorporated it into all aspects of its work. You can make Know My Name a very exciting initiative. The stories of our talented women artists inspire in us the courage, the drive and the determination to push on with what the National Gallery of Australia has started. It can be hard, in 2020, to keep on with the work that remains to be done in our long struggle for equality for women. What you’re saying is that statistics do not equal equality. I find people seldom know the names of women who have made significant contributions in many fields in our society. I love to talk to young ones about the pioneers of the women’s movement who opened up opportunities in education and employment. They are amazed by stories of the blatant discrimination, sex stereotyping and sexism that affected my generation. Like me, though, they are inspired by people who stand up and advocate for fairness and justice and by those who simply get on with it and set a great example by their resilience and determination. There are some truly uplifting stories of women artists. What shines through is their commitment and dedication to art, their courage in keeping going no matter what, getting around the constraints that confronted them. True love, hard work. It’s not until you actually read their stories that you think they were pioneers, and it is a tragedy that people don’t know their name because they’re part of Australian history. Why do you think the time is now? Is it post Me Too? Do you think something’s happening in the culture? I think that’s true. I think that it’s evolution. Yes, but like you I want it to last past a moment, to stay on this trajectory, supporting and lifting up women. I don’t want my words to take on a gloomy tone. We have much to celebrate when we reflect on achievements of the twentieth century. Know My Name will build on these, I’m certain. I feel very optimistic about reaching our goal of gender equality. Did you think we’d be further by now? Yes, I did. But I celebrate the changes achieved during my lifetime. They are around me every day, in my family and among the young ones.
‘There are some truly uplifting stories of women artists. What shines through is their commitment and dedication to art, their courage in keeping going no matter what, getting around the constraints that confronted them.’
There’s no point in us even having this conversation about gender equality if we aren’t taking the boys and men along on the journey with us, is there? Absolutely. I must say, my sons have been on that journey with me their whole lives. For many people, Know My Name will open up new ideas and fresh conversations. But, for many of us too, it will give us cause to reflect on the stunning contribution of women artists to our society. Alison Kubler is editor of VAULT Magazine and a member of the National Gallery of Australia’s Council and Know My Name Project Board. Quentin Bryce was Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia and Patron of the National Gallery of Australia’s Foundation.
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THE CRUTHERS COLLECTION OF WOMEN’S ART AND THE SHEILA FOUNDATION L A R A N IC HOL L S Lara Nicholls is Assistant Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture, National Gallery of Australia.
She married Sir James in 1950, who was knighted in 1981 for his work in television and his service to the community. They spent almost a decade in New York before returning to Perth in 1989. In 1995, 164 works by 80 women that Lady Cruthers had collected over the years were shown at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art in the exhibition In the Company of Women, and it became clear that this part of the family collection was the strongest.
of Women’s Art is now a great public resource for the nation, which sparked the birth of the Sheila Foundation for the study of historical and continuing gender bias against women in Australian art. Lady Cruthers and her husband Sir James, with
The family then decided to sell the works of male legacy of this decision stands today like a beacon. The numbers alone are impressive. The collection contained 460 works by the time the family donated it to the University of Western Australia in 2007. And today, thanks to further donations to the providing a vital art historical and archival resource for the entire nation. The collection, however, was not enough for the Cruthers family’s quest for gender equality. In May 2018, they founded the Sheila Foundation, the naming of which is a witty double entendre both
their son John, began collecting art in the 1970s, each
honouring Lady Cruthers and grounding their
following their own tastes. From the outset, Lady
work with the Australian slang for a woman who is
Cruthers was instantly drawn to work by women
courageous, capable and pragmatic. The foundation’s
For decades, when faced with the work hanging on the walls of museums and galleries worldwide, the art-going public have been asking ‘Where are all the women artists?’ This question, which remains as relevant today as ever, is what prompted American art collectors and patrons Wilhelmina and Wallace Holladay to cofound the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC in 1981. Fast forward to January of 2016, in an infinitely more connected world, and the museum challenged us all with the simple proposition: ‘If you ask someone to name five artists, they will likely name prominent male artists, but how many people can list five women artists?’ We all froze. Fumbling for words.
artists, especially self-portraits. Janine Burke’s
goal is ‘painting Australian women back into
exhibition Australian Women Artists: 1840–1940
our art history and creating a strong future for
they then threw down the gauntlet with their
at the George Paton Gallery in 1975 crystallised
contemporary women artists’.
award-winning #5WomenArtists social
her conviction. Rare self-portraits by Elise Blumann,
The family initially seed funded the foundation
Kate O’Connor were early acquisitions, later joined
with $600,000, but their ambition is to achieve
by arresting self-portraits by Freda Robertshaw
an endowment fund of over $2 million to support
and Jacqueline Hick. When I spoke to him in December last year, John remarked that his mother saw reflected in these portraits her own experience as a ‘stylish, independent and confident young woman’. She was the youngest of nine children to Italian immigrants Camilla and Giovanni Della Vedova, who ran a local pub in Boulder on the Kalgoorlie goldfields. Her father died when she was a child, and the family moved to Perth. Despite being a bright student, she left school at the age of fourteen to help support them.
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K E R E N N IC HOL S ON Keren Nicholson is Social Media Manager, National Gallery of Australia.
artists to fund new acquisitions by women, and the
university, it contains over 730 works by women, Originally a private passion, the Cruthers Collection
CAN YOU NAME #5WOMENARTISTS?
During Women’s History Month in March,
media campaign. Social media democratised the fight for gender equity in the arts. Anyone with
their initiatives, which include support for the data-crunching Countess Report, the digitisation of the Cruthers Collection and resourcing of the Into the Light research project aimed at identifying generations of women artists from 1870 to 1960. Now, that is a true ‘Sheila’ at work. Interested readers can discover the rich history of the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art in Into the light, edited by John Cruthers and Lee Kinsella, UWA Publishing, 2012. Information can also be found on the Sheila Foundation website, sheila.org.au.
TOP LEFT Sir James and Lady Sheila Cruthers in their retirement apartment in 2008. Lady Cruthers holds Joy Hester’s Girl in corner, one of her favourite paintings. Photo: Kerry Edwards Courtesy The West Australian
TOP RIGHT 2019 Women’s March on Washington Free Community Day, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, 19 January 2019. Photo: Kevin Allen
a smart phone was equipped to amplify the names, stories and works of women artists. In 2019, the museum upped the ante, calling for cultural institutions (and individuals) to turn awareness into action. Inspired by #5WomenArtists and the work of Australian initiatives such as the Countess Report and the Sheila Foundation, the National Gallery of Australia launched Know My Name. In doing so, it joins more than 1500 cultural institutions around the world who have taken up the cause
DANCING INTO HISTORY: ALICE TOPP J E S S IC A AU S S E R L E C H N E R Jessica Ausserlechner is Partnerships Manager, National Gallery of Australia.
The work she produced, Trace, sparked her passion for choreography, and she has since choreographed three other critically acclaimed works for the Bodytorque season. As a choreographer, and dancer, it is incredibly important to Topp to see the cultural landscape of classical ballet shift to include more women’s voices. She believes classical ballet deserves an equal injection of choreographic female voices for both sides of the conversation to be balanced and heard and for ideas and perspectives to be
through the #5WomenArtists campaign and
presented equally. Her recent appointment as
sought to make the original question unthinkable.
Resident Choreographer at The Australian Ballet
We can do this by addressing the gender imbalance
is incredibly important in this respect. She is not
of our collection and programs. And we encourage
In 2018, dancer Alice Topp became The Australian
just furthering her career but also forging a path
our social-media savvy audiences to join the
Ballet’s first female Resident Choreographer in
for classical dancers everywhere who, perhaps like
campaign by posting their experiences of art
fifteen years, and the second only in the company’s
her, had ‘always thought there needed to be this
by women with the hashtag #5WomenArtists.
58-year history. In a seemingly female-dominated
lightning bolt of inspiration’.
Follow: #5WomenArtists @womeninthearts nmwa.org/5WomenArtists
art form such as classical ballet, one wonders
Topp suggests that a greater gender equity
then, where are all the female choreographers
in the choreographic landscape, particularly in
and why haven’t we seen more classical dance
classical choreography, can be achieved with more
compositions by women? To find out, I asked
support and investment in choreographic programs
Topp about her experience as a dancer and her
specifically for female makers. Learning from
move into choreography in 2010.
Topp’s own experience, giving dancers not just
Being in the industry her entire life, Topp reflects
their voice is particularly critical to this change.
And this is saying something for someone who is
‘Female dancers don’t have a lot of time’, she says,
now in her thirties and has been dancing since
‘Your one of twenty-four swans, there’s not enough
she was four years old. ‘I think, in dance, and in
of you, you’re on every night, you do two hundred
classical ballet in particular, women have always
shows a year, you don’t have a lot of time to develop
been the muse’, she says. This positioning of women
your own ideas. It’s about making time and making
as the muse—which exists, of course, in art history
those opportunities to test your voice’.
too—is perhaps why choreography as a career path had simply not occurred to Topp before she was TOP LEFT Free Community Weekend for the Women’s March on Washington, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, 22 January 2017. Photo: Emily Haight, NMWA
TOP RIGHT Alice Topp, Resident Choreographer, The Australian Ballet. Photo: Kate Longley
the physical but the mental space to develop
that she has only ever danced works created by men.
offered the opportunity in 2010 to choreograph
Alice Topp is a Dancer and Resident Choreographer at The Australian Ballet.
a work for The Australian Ballet’s Bodytorque season, the company’s showcase. She had witnessed many friends who were dance makers juggling hospitality positions while applying for grants, endeavouring to obtain rehearsal space and securing dancers to develop work, so she thought it would be a crime not to accept The Australian Ballet’s offer.
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TJANPI DESERT WEAVERS F E AT U R E b y A N N I E K A S K I N N E R
For quarter of a century, Tjanpi Desert Weavers has brought together artists from the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yakunytjatjara (NPY) Lands, which spans the Central and Western desert regions of South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Celebrating twenty-five years of success, this social enterprise is creating a large new work for the National Gallery of Australia. Since 1995, artists from Tjanpi Desert Weavers (tjanpi meaning ‘dry grass’), which has a gallery and base of operations in Alice Springs, have woven native Australian desert grasses into spectacular contemporary fibre art, capturing the energies and rhythms of their Country, culture and community. Tjanpi is the dynamic social enterprise of the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council and was established after Anangu minyma (Aboriginal women) of the Central and Western desert regions identified their need for a culturally appropriate income
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stream that would empower them to remain on Country and support their families. Since then, a wide-reaching network of mothers, daughters, grandmothers and aunties across a 350,000 squarekilometre region of the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia have drawn upon traditional practices to weave together their shared stories, skills and experiences and financially support themselves by creating innovative baskets and sculptures.
remote WA community of Warakurna by a group of twenty Ngaanyatjarra Tjanpi artists. The work will focus on the Kungkarangkalpa songline near the Wanarn community of WA, where the Seven Sisters stopped to rest in caves while being pursued by Wati Nyiru. From the beginning, Tjanpi’s art practice has centred on trips out to Country to collect grass for their fibre art, taking the time to sit down together to weave, to hunt, visit significant sites, perform
‘Nowadays there are many different ways in which we transmit those ancient stories because we really held those stories strong.’ To celebrate Tjanpi’s twenty-fifth anniversary in 2020, Tjanpi artists have been commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia, with support from Wesfarmers Arts, to create a work based on the Kungkarangkalpa (Seven Sisters) songline. Building upon their rich repertoire of large-scale installations, the commission is being created in a bush camp near the small,
inma (cultural song and dance) and teach their children about their responsibilities to Country. As part of this, artists have experimented with large-scale collaborative fibre-art installations to share their Tjukurrpa (lore), scenes of daily living and precontact life, generating awareness and insight into their culture, Country and communities for their families
and the broader Australian community. In a talk for String Theory at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in 2013, artist Nyurpaya Kaika-Burton explained: ‘Nowadays there are many different ways in which we transmit those ancient stories because we really held those stories strong’. One way is through paintings and another is the ‘sculptural way’, she says. This way is collaborative, social and cultural and draws on the materials from the places ‘where those Dreaming tracks move through the country … These sculptural pieces here are filled up with the story from the land’. The commission for the National Gallery of Australia represents an opportunity for Tjanpi artists to delve deeper and continue their artistic investigation of the Kungkarangkalpa songline while exploring exciting new techniques and methods of realisation. Annieka Skinner is Assistant Manager, Tjanpi Desert Weavers. The Tjanpi Desert Weavers commission will be on display at the National Gallery of Australia from 2 May.
TJANPI DESERT WEAVERS
PATRICIA PICCININI F E AT U R E b y JA K LY N B A B I NG T ON
Artist Patricia Piccinini creates fantastical creatures that suggest what it means to be human. Patricia Piccinini’s practice resides in the complex sphere of the real and hyperreal, the factual and speculative, and is mindfully engaged with a wide range of ideas from concepts of the uncanny to the advent of the cyborg, biopolitics and posthumanism. Based on a deep curiosity for the natural world, Piccinini’s wonder situates her practice at the frontier of some of the most pressing issues of the twenty-first century. Her new project Skywhales: Every heart sings, undertaken for the National Gallery of Australia, is an extension of her recurring concern for the interconnectedness of all life forms and a call for the recognition of our genetic bonds to the world around us. In 2013, she created her first hot-air balloon, Skywhale, which was commissioned for and launched during Canberra’s centenary celebrations. This enormous, flying public sculpture was recently donated to the National Gallery of Australia and will be joined by a second hot-air balloon, commissioned as part The Balnaves Contemporary Series, to form the ‘Skywhales: Every heart sings’ project. The new balloon, Skywhalepapa, is a masculine companion piece to the maternal Skywhale, and the pair create a pertinent and timely narrative. More than a new kind of public art, when flown together, the skywhales form a family unit, one that questions traditionally gendered familial roles, particularly that of the expected caregiver. And, like much of her work, they also invite us to think about ourselves as part of nature by emphasising the attributes and behaviours we share with animals. When the skywhales are interpreted as being in a familiar relationship and enacting recognisable roles, the project becomes a celebration of progressive parenting and a clear call for continued feminist concern. ‘Any and all of the many kinds of human relationships that we know— and I mean that in the most expansive sense—also exist in some form among other animals. Shared parenting, sole-sex parenting, extended family, community childcare, all of these things exist with other animals. In some ways that is the point, there are other models for parenting that are
PATRICIA PICCININI
just as natural … I guess the key message is that this is not a work that is trying to tell people what a family should be. I hope it is presenting an image of nurture and care that is inclusive, that suggests that everyone can be a carer and that celebrates caring regardless of gender. If I could I would populate the sky with a hundred skywhales to represent every possible sort of family’. Many of Piccinini’s best known works, realised as sculptures, videos and hot-air balloons, function to bridge the divide between the human and animal worlds and trigger our anthropomorphic instinct to ascribe human characteristics and emotion
onto that which is non-human. Many neuroscientists see anthropomorphism as a necessary biological attribution for ‘intersubjectivity’, an essential tool with which humans can establish relationships for survival, as well as strong social allegiance: a biological instinct that affects both nature and culture. Artists such as Piccinini are purposefully working at the nexus of our science, society and emotion with the hope of affecting real change. When humans can identify and acknowledge their connection to other life forms, empathy results and a shift in our assessment of particular events and situations occurs—from critical and selfish to considerate and cooperative. ‘It is not so much that we should be amazed when animals are like us,’ she says, ‘it is more that we should acknowledge how much like them we are. This is interesting to me because I
TOP Patricia Piccinini with Skywhale 2013, 19 November 2019.
LEFT Patricia Piccinini’s concept drawing of Skywhalepapa 2020. Image courtesy the artist
feel that it changes the terms of the relationship, both in terms of the obligations and the implications. If we are above or outside of nature then we can wreck it because it is a thing that we have, but when we are part of nature, damaging it damages us’. Piccinini’s skywhales will take flight for the first time together over Canberra on 2 May, and periodically until 26 July (full flight dates and times can be found on the National Gallery of Australia’s website). Later in the year, they will float across the skies of Australia as a national travelling exhibition, thanks to the Principal Patronage of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation. Jaklyn Babington is Senior Curator, Contemporary, National Gallery of Australia. Skywhales: Every heart sings will see Patricia Piccinini’s Skywhale 2013 and Skywhalepapa 2020 take flight over Canberra from 2 May to 26 July. Flight dates and times: nga.gov.au. Skywhalepapa is commissioned as part of The Balnaves Contemporary Series.
OPPOSITE Weavers Nancy Jackson, Bridget Jackson, Dianne Golding and Eunice Porter with their work Tjilkamarta Minyma Kutjarra Munu Wati Ngirntaka Warta (Two Echidna Wives and Perentie Man Tree) near Warakurna, Western Australia, 2013. Photo: Jo Foster
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Putting this list together was a tricky delight. The delightful part, of course, has been the opportunity to rave about women from whom I constantly draw inspiration, energy, comradery and courage. The tricky part was getting the list down to five. In the past few years, I’ve had the immense privilege of working with and for some truly incredible people. Many of them have become friends to me. All of them have become heroes to me. When you’re in the business of punching up and calling out, the most dangerous thing
to feel is alone. Even if your work isn’t always explicitly issue-specific, if you’re a young woman, you’ve got an uphill climb to any kind of microphone. I have chosen five very different women of letters—not necessarily other authors. In fact, I tried to avoid picking authors. In Australia, we have this funny notion that no writer has really ‘arrived’ until they’ve individually authored a book. It means that many incredible thinkers and communicators don’t have the household name recognition they deserve.
BR I LEE Photo: Leah Jing
WOMEN OF LETTERS
We asked the award-winning author of Eggshell skull and Beauty to name five female writers she admires the most. SELECTED by BR I LEE
MADDISON CONNAUGHTON Australia has a strong history of progressive editors helping shape the nation’s intellectual landscape (I’m thinking of Donald Horne). We also have a strong present of them disrespecting it (I’m thinking of Rupert Murdoch) and a growing problem of very concentrated media ownership. Maddison is the editor of The Saturday Paper, and under her stewardship the weekly paper has greatly expanded (and diversified) its network of writers. They regularly break large political stories. Their editorial standards and conduct are impeccable. All the writers and journalists I’ve ever met who have filed for her have spoken highly of her, and many of us have learned a great deal from having our work edited by her. She is calm in the face of deadlines and professional in the face of a clearly degenerating news and media industry. I oscillate between praying she isn’t poached by some huge title overseas and knowing she’ll get whatever career goals she sets for herself.
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ELOISE GRILLS
NEHA KALE
What Eloise creates is very original and special. I find it difficult to explain (which is often a good sign with art and the like) but, very simply, she is a poet, essayist and visual artist. She writes words and makes images, and often her work is a combination of word and image. Much of what she creates is autobiographical, and I am overcome with a sense of intimacy and insight when I read it. Some of her writing is devastating, but much of it also demonstrates a dark, delicious sense of humour. Eloise’s first full-length illustrated essay collection, Big beautiful female theory, should be coming out in early 2021, and she’s just won a three-month Paris residency and a couple of other major grants.
Neha produces what I wish more arts and culture writing was like: all the enthusiasm, none of the posturing. She’s combining cultural insight with art history, power analyses, institutional critiques and great interviewing abilities in a way that makes her a really exciting voice. Basically, everything you want from a brain connected to a pen! Plus, she’s not afraid of hard work or leg work. Something I can neither confirm nor deny is that she may publish a book of some kind at some point in time. Were this to happen, hypothetically of course, I cannot stress enough how erudite it would be and how much your intellectual landscape might be challenged and improved by reading it. Photo: Laura Mangen
Photo: Leah Jing
RAE JOHNSTON Rae is a multi-award-winning STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) reporter, and TV host, and broadcaster, and a bunch other stuff. The ‘ultimate slashie’, as they say. I follow her work for a whole lot of different reasons. Just the other week, I saw her announce she was speaking on a panel about the ethics of violence in video games. I don’t know why tech and science news is often considered ‘other’ news when it has such a colossal impact on our lives. Rae is always covering topics I want to know more about. She is also a Wiradjuri woman, and I’ve heard her speak about the false narratives in Australia around ‘intelligence’ and ‘education’— who is ‘smart’ and what they look like and how university is mandatory. I’m a big fan. Photo: Lyn Taylor
BR I LEE Bri Lee is an award-winning author and freelance journalist. Her books are Eggshell skull and Beauty, and her writing has appeared in The Monthly, Good Weekend, The Saturday Paper, The Guardian and elsewhere. Her legal research and advocacy saw her named a Fin Review ‘Woman of Influence’ in 2019.
NINA FUNNELL Nina has done more to improve this country than most politicians I’ve ever met. She’s a multi-award-winning investigative journalist who has also helped instigate law reform. The #LetHerSpeak campaign led to Tasmania and the Northern Territory changing archaic laws that prohibited survivors of sex crimes from speaking out. Her work with End Rape on Campus Australia and The Red Zone Report changed the national conversation on the epidemic of sexual assault within universities, and how these educational organisations are failing in their duty of care to students. Her subsequent journalism has shown how specifically international students are targeted and then silenced. Nina is incredibly resilient and she is kind, but please let me also put this succinctly: if you or your organisation find out you’re being investigated by Nina, you best just cooperate. This woman has got FOI (freedom of information) requests down to an art, and she does. not. give. up.
In the formative years of her career, Jack River (the character and name assumed by Holly Rankin when she steps in front of a microphone or onto a stage) has already established a clear precedent for crafting meticulous, deep and shimmering worlds to draw listeners in, inviting them to join her in exploring elements of the human condition: hope, grief, joy, fear, love. ‘Fool’s Gold’, the first single from her debut record Sugar Mountain, has gone platinum. She’s sold out shows across
Australia and played the country’s biggest music festivals. At the 2018 ARIA Music Awards, she earned nominations for Breakthrough Artist, Pop Album and Engineer of the Year, while in 2019 ‘Sugar’, her gold-selling single with dance duo Peking Duk, was a contender for Best Dance Release. Her new album Stranger Heart is out now through Mushroom Records. Here, Rankin gives us five women in Australian music she admires.
JAC K R I V E R Photo: Daphne Nguyen
WOMEN OF NOTE(S)
Rising star of Australian music Jack River gives us five inspiring women in the Australian music industry. S E L E C T E D b y JAC K R I V E R
JESSICA DUCROU
HEIDI LENFFER
THELMA PLUM
ODETTE
MILLIE MILLGATE
Jess is the Co-CEO of Secret Sounds. She is behind so many great things in our industry, but her main creation is Splendour in the Grass. Over twenty years, she has grown Splendour to be the largest and best music festival in our country. Along the way, she has created a company full of female executives, creatives and logistics experts, and she revolutionised the way we do festivals in Australia. She subtly weaves her passion for politics, science, fashion and a progressive social agenda into the festival—making it a place where young people can truly explore their hearts and minds to the sound of the world’s leading artists. She is the kind of person that keeps away from the spotlight, instead pouring her insurmountable energy into making the spotlight clear and strong for artists of all backgrounds, and the audiences she tirelessly works to create magic for.
Heidi is a musical artist of Cloud Control fame, a new mother and an incredible friend of mine. She has spent the last two years developing FEAT.—an artist, athlete and creative industry led renewables investment fund. FEAT. is a world-first initiative for artists to take ownership over accelerating Australia’s clean energy future at a critical time in human history. FEAT. basically makes it extremely easy to invest portions of profit from tours, matches or whatever you’re up to in an Australian solar farm. It is extremely important work by an extremely important woman.
Thelma is somebody whose name you may already know. She is one of Australia’s greatest ARIA-nominated, chart-topping and festival-headlining artists. Thelma is a Gamilaroi woman who is using her artistry to illustrate the experience of being a young Indigenous person in Australia. She is being the role model that she wanted as a young person. The lyrics of her acclaimed song, ‘Homecoming Queen’ give a glimpse into the power she effortlessly takes back as she reflects on her youth: ‘I’ll be my own homecoming queen / As long as it feels good to me / I’ll be the voice of this town / You’ll be your own homecoming queen / Forget all the shit that you’ve seen / Put on that crown’. Mmmm, yep, spin it again and again.
The art of poetry sometimes feels lost in popular music, especially young people’s music and especially in Australia. But, alas, with her release of To a Stranger in 2018, Georgia Odette Sallybanks proved how thirsty we are for poetic, dense lyricism and deep feminine honesty. At just 23, she has become a beacon of lyrical light, alongside Sampa The Great, Angie McMahon, Gretta Ray and so many others— spilling out lyrics like ‘Watch me read you / The turning pages of an epic / Dissected hallucinogenic / Black coffee addict / Life, ended lies’. At festivals, she causes a certain mist of slow magic, a trance like state. It is a sight to see, hands waving slowly to poetry amidst a culture that can seem too fast and disposable.
Millie is the Executive Producer of Sounds Australia, the body that represents Australian music worldwide. On top of her official role as EP, Millie goes above and beyond with her sincere passion for understanding how we can increase female, Indigenous, LGBTQI+ and cultural representation across the board in our industry. She has a sense of kindness and calm that cools boardrooms and disperses ego. She is an example of why we really do need female representation in executive positions across all industries. Millie knows everything that is happening everywhere. The reasons behind most complications and most successes, this skill of knowing one’s environment lends itself to her natural ability to understand or take the time to understand. I hope all young women in music get to be mentored, assisted and inspired by women like Millie as they traverse their paths in a complex industry.
JAC K R I V E R Jack River is an ARIA-nominated Australian singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and music producer.
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KNOW MY NAME
All Know My Name exhibitions and events are free of charge unless listed otherwise. For more program info, go to nga.gov.au.
EVENT HIGHLIGHTS Club Ate: Club Muva
S AT 7 M A R 8 P M U N T I L L AT E A one-night-only inclusive street party celebrating community and connections through movement, sound and storytelling.
Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon S U N 8 M A R 1 2 . 3 0P M
On International Women’s Day, contribute to Know My Name by learning to edit and update Wikipedia pages on Australian women artists.
EXHIBITIONS Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now
Patricia Piccinini: Open studio 6 M A R – 2 6 J U L 10A M
W EEK E N D S & P U BL IC HOL I DAY S
Angelica Mesiti: ASSEMBLY F R OM NOV
By bringing together Australian women artists from different times, places and cultures, this exhibition proposes another history, upending the assumption that modern and contemporary Australian art is a male-dominated narrative.
Angelica Mesiti recently represented Australia at the 58 Venice Biennale with the three-channel video installation ASSEMBLY 2019. Acquired for the national collection, the work will be presented at the Gallery in Canberra before touring Australia.
Club Ate: In Muva We Trust
The Body Electric
2 8 F E B – 9 M A R 8 –1 1 P M
28 M AR – 20 SEP
For the 2020 Enlighten Illuminations, Club Ate have created a monumental video projection for the National Gallery of Australia’s facade which shares stories of resistance, transformation and queer futures.
Presenting key works on the subjects of sex, pleasure and desire by female-identifying artists who were some of the pioneers of photography and video. The images in this exhibition show how these subjects are an animating part of the human experience.
3 0 M AY – 1 3 S E P
th
Engage in fun-filled activities in the Tim Fairfax Learning Studio inspired by Patricia Piccinini’s Skywhale and Skywhalepapa.
Skywhales: Every heart sings S AT 2 M AY DAW N
Patricia Piccinini’s new hot-air balloon sculpture Skywhalepapa and its 2013 companion Skywhale 2013 will take their first flight together.
Art Weekend: Know My Name 2 9 – 3 1 M AY
This year, many Art Weekends (held on the last full weekend of every month) will be dedicated to Australian women artists. This one will coincide with the opening weekend of the Know My Name exhibition, with special guest artists from Tjanpi Desert Weavers in the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands.
Skywhales: Every heart sings 2 M AY – 2 6 J U L
Commissioned for The Balnaves Contemporary Series, Patricia Piccinini’s Skywhalepapa 2020, a monumental hot-air balloon, joins its companion piece, Skywhale 2013, in this outdoor (and overhead) exhibition. For flight dates and times, go to: nga.gov.au.
Tjanpi Desert Weavers
Descriptive tour
2 M AY – 4 O C T
S U N 3 1 M AY 1 1 A M
A new commission, supported by Wesfarmers Arts, by the Tjanpi Desert Weavers. This large-scale installation tells the ancestral story of the Seven Sisters Dreaming using sculptural forms woven from materials such as tjanpi (meaning ‘dry grass’) and raffia.
An hour-long tour of the exhibition Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now for people who are blind or vision impaired.
Auslan signinterpreted tour S U N 3 1 M AY 2 P M
ABOVE Patricia Piccinini Skywhale 2013, mixed media. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of anonymous donor 2019. Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program. © Patricia Piccinini RIGHT TOP Rene Nelson weaving in Irrunytju (Wingellina), Western Australia, 2017. Photo: Rhett Hammerton
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RIGHT BOTTOM Jess Johnson and Simon Ward Terminus 2017–18 (still), virtual-reality experience in five parts. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2018. Commissioned with the assistance of The Balnaves Foundation 2017. Image courtesy of the artists, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland, and Jack Hanley Gallery, New York
An hour-long tour of the exhibition Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now for people who are deaf or hearing impaired.
Know My Name: Women and Art in the 21st Century conference Jess Johnson and Simon Ward: Terminus T OU R I NG NOW
Inspired by sci-fi, comics and fantasy movies, Terminus is a virtual-reality installation commissioned with funds provided by The Balnaves Foundation. Funding support for the tour is from Visions of Australia. For venues and dates, go to nga.gov.au.
F R I 10 – S AT 1 1 J U L
Bringing together established and emerging artists, curators and academics from across the world to share new research, insights and creative practice and to discuss women and gender equity in the arts. Registration fees apply.
AUSTRALIAN WOMEN ARTISTS 1900 TO NOW 30 MAY–13 SEPTEMBER
FREE ENTRY
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KNOW MY NAME Know My Name is an initiative of the National Gallery of Australia to celebrate the significant contributions that Australian women artists have made, and continue to make, to Australia’s cultural life. The initiative is a defining moment in the National Gallery of Australia’s history and asserts its new mission to lead a progressive and inclusive cultural agenda. In 2020–21, the Gallery is delivering a vibrant program of exhibitions, events, commissions, creative collaborations, publications and partnerships as part of Know My Name. It is also implementing guiding principles that will ensure gender parity in its programming and collection development. Know My Name is made possible with the generous support of our partners and patrons.
HOW TO SUPPORT KNOW MY NAME Help us celebrate Australian women artists by making a tax-deductible donation to the Know My Name initiative. Your generosity will directly support the realisation of Know My Name projects, bringing the work of Australian women artists to all Australians.
PRINCIPAL PATRON
STRATEGIC PARTNERS
EXHIBITION PATRONS
MAJOR PARTNER
LEGAL PARTNER
SUPPORTING PARTNERS
CULTURAL PARTNERS
ON L I N E nga.gov.au/ knowmyname T E L E P HON E +61 (0)2 6240 6547
MAJOR PATRONS Claire Stokes and Ryan Stokes
Sue Maple-Brown AM
Fiona Martin-Weber and Tom Hayward
EMAIL foundation@nga.gov.au
SUPPORTING PATRONS National Gallery of Australia 2020 Gala Fund American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia with the generous support of Geoffrey Pack and Leigh Pack Philip Bacon AM Kay Bryan Sue Cato Penny Clive Helen Cook Kerry Gardner AM Sarah Greer and Damian Clothier QC Colin Hindmarsh and Barbara Hindmarsh Wayne Kratzmann Dr Andrew Lu OAM and Dr Geoffrey Lancaster AM Josh Milani and Danielle Milani Jan Murphy and Sydney Williams QC Judy Pilbeam and Rod Pilbeam Gary Sands Penelope Seidler AM Sally Sojan John Story AO and Georgina Story Rhonda White AO Ray Wilson OAM