Post-election Pessimism

Alien to Academia

Amy Briggs

Nearly thirty years ago, The Guerrilla Girls quipped that the advantages of being a woman artist included “working without the pressure of success”.This criticism struck at the hypocrisy of museums and galleries who were willing to display females as subjects whilst simultaneously refusing to recognise them as artists in their own right. Significant advances in gender equality have been made since then, but this has barely translated to the art world. Curators at the National Gallery of Australia discovered this themselves upon observing that the number of pieces by living women in their collection had shrunk over the past four decades, despite the increasing prominence of female artists worldwide. Acting as a mea culpa is the newly opened Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now. The exhibition features over 400 works by 170 female-identifying individuals, with household names like Grace Cossington-Smith, Fiona Hall, and Tracey Moffatt displayed alongside lesser-known but equally skilled female artists. By showing new faces in old spaces, the exhibition presents an assault on the canon that artistic establishments operate under. Ultimately, it is a triumphant and thoughtful representation of women, their work, and their experiences, through the prism of art.

The subject of aliens and the paranormal New Faces and Old Spaces: have been a relatively taboo subject for governments and academics. In astronomy and cosmology, it has generally been accepted that if Know My Name Exhibition you want to be taken “seriously”, you shouldn’t touch the subject of aliens. Of course, when most people see the word alien, images of horror movies, E.T. and more come to mind. The image Review of scientific research and papers almost never comes to mind first. Isabella Vacaflores

The first academic paper to investigate the subject of aliens was Encounters by Edith Fiore, published in 1997. The paper is a collection of psychological case studies of abduction victims. There have been criticisms of Encounters, as Fiore used hypnotic therapeutic techniques in the trial and possible unintended priming of A hanging of nearly 50 portraits at the the subjects by admitting that she believed in entrance of Know My Name causes a double encounters and was “abducted” herself. These take. From Brenda Croft’s stunning monochrome sort of statements may have influenced the case photos of a First Nations elder in Matilda (Ngambri/studies and thus, are not in-line with generally Ngunnawal) (2019) to Joy Hester’s amorphous acrylic accepted science practices. These practices Woman With Rose (1956) and Kate Beynon’s acutely being that researchers should not allow their bias millennial self-portrait (2012), women dominate a to influence the participants. historically patriarchal space. The sheer number of females on show implicitly sets the exhibition up

By being the first paper on a subject, to offer a pluralised understanding of the artists Encounters set the standard. If scientists are displayed, recognising that no two individuals are interested in studying UFOs (unidentified flying the same. objects) and related alien content, it is hard to remove stigma, especially if agencies and grant The curatorial choice of thematically bodies believe that the subject has no scientific grouping artworks instead of organising them in worth. conventionally teleological displays supports this. In Remembering the soft textures of Kathy Temin’s Recently, the U.S. Pavilion Garden (2012) offers a different perspective Congress held a hearing to the drama of Rosemary Laing’s photographs to discuss UAP of falling brides in Flight Research (1999) and the grungy desolation of eX de Medici’s watercolour tableau The Wreckers (2018-19). By setting aside traditional cultural and chronological boundaries, the exhibition rejects potentially exclusionary essentialist narratives of women’s experiences and highlights the intangible relationships between artists and their works.

(unidentified aerial phenomena) encounters that have been recorded. The last time a hearing took place was more than 50 years ago, when UAPs were referred to as UFOs. The reason for this hearing was not to verify UAP footage, but to try and look for human activity. Even if the U.S. Congress was not looking to verify otherworldly life, the media and public attention brought by the hearing may change sentiment towards research into aliens. It may be more acceptable to include the phrase alien and UAP in future research. The Australian Space Agency is our own organization that deals in this area, and they are yet to make a public stance on the validity of previous alien encounters. In their 2019 – 2028 Civil Space strategy, there are no projects listed looking into aliens or UAPs. This makes sense as the agency was only established in 2018, but then again, aliens and UAP content have a reputation. If researchers are not directly referencing or researching aliens, would they be indirectly looking for them? Currently, there is a growing body of research into exoplanets. Exoplanets are planets in other solar systems. The first exoplanets were discovered in 1992, orbiting around a pulsar (meaning that there would be no water on the planets). As of 2022, there have been 5005 exoplanets discovered. Some of these planets look to be habitable (meaning at a safe distance from their star and possibly containing water). They may hold alien life. More research and time is needed to confirm which planets, if any, have life. So, we may never get to meet Paul, and researchers may continue to avoid UAPs and alien abductions. What we will definitely see is more research into exoplanets and hopefully life on discovered ones.