UNFINISHED BUSINESS: Perspectives on art and feminism
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UNFINISHED BUSINESS: Perspectives on art and feminism
UNFINISHED BUSINESS Perspectives on art and feminism 15 December 2017 – 25 March 2018 Curators: Paola Balla Max Delany Julie Ewington Annika Kristensen Vikki McInnes Elvis Richardson
ARTISTS Alex Martinis Roe Megan McMurchy Another Planet Posters Inc. Spence Messih Tracey Moffatt Atong Atem Ann Newmarch Margot Nash Cigdem Aydemir Claudia Nicholson Nat and Ali Ali Gumillya Baker Ruth O’Leary Margot Oliver Archie Barry Frances (Budden) Phoenix Monica Pellizzari Vivienne Binns Elizabeth Pulie Patricia Piccinini Hannah Brontë Clare Rae Jacinta Schreuder Janet Burchill Hannah Raisin Soda Jerk and Jennifer McCamley Tai Snaith Jeni Thornley Madison Bycroft Giselle Stanborough Sarah Watt Sadie Chandler Desiree Tahiri Jackie Wolf aka Jackie Farkas Kate Daw Sophie Takách Linda Dement Salote Tawale PERFORMANCE PROGRAM Narelle Desmond Nat Thomas Frances Barrett Kelly Doley The Cross Art Projects Barbara Campbell Mikala Dwyer Lyndal Walker Hannah Donnelly Mary Featherston Shevaun Wright Embittered Swish and Emily Floyd Lyndal Jones Fiona Foley FILM PROGRAM Técha Noble FRAN FEST Poster Project Hayley Arjona Linda Sproul Virginia Fraser Gillian Armstrong and Elvis Richardson Art Theory Productions Sarah Goffman Barbara Campbell Elizabeth Gower Barbara Cleveland Natalie Harkin Essie Coffey Sandra Hill Megan Cope Hissy Fit Emma-Kate Croghan Jillposters Destiny Deacon Kate Just and Virginia Fraser Maria Kozic Sue Dodd LEVEL Helen Grace Eugenia Lim Deborah Kelly Lip Collective The Kingpins Linda Marrinon Samantha Lang
CONTENTS 6 PARTNER’S PREFACE 68 CYBERFEMINIST 132 FILM PROGRAM
Carol Schwartz AM BEDSHEET
Linda Dement 136 PERFORMANCE
8 FOREWORD PROGRAM
Linda Mickleborough 78 HISTORY IS
A SOFT CLAY 138 LIST OF WORKS
12 UNFINISHED BUSINESS MEDIUM: EUGENIA
Max Delany LIM AND SALOTE 144 CONTRIBUTORS
TAWALE
22 UNFINISHED Laura Castagnini 145 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FEMINISM,
UNCEASING ACTIVISM: 90 WOMEN WITH US
AUSTRALIAN ART Ellen van Neerven
OVER FIVE DECADES
Julie Ewington 98 GENDER EQUITY AND
THE CLASSROOM:
30 THANK YOU THE FITZROY HIGH
Annika Kristensen SCHOOL FEMINIST
COLLECTIVE
38 I CAN’T BELIEVE I STILL Nat Thomas
HAVE TO PROTEST THIS
FUCKING SHIT 108
ON ART, THE
Vikki McInnes PREDATOR, AND
THE GRAVEYARD OF
46 BLAK FEMALE MODERN CELEBRITY
FUTURISMS AND YTE GARDENING
FEMINISM WAVES Van Badham
Paola Balla
120
FEMINISM AND ART:
56 WHEN ART MEETS NOT DONE YET
FEMINISM Jude Adams
Elvis Richardson
PARTNER’S PREFACE
The Trawalla Foundation is a proud partner
of ACCA’s exhibition Unfinished Business:
Perspectives on art and feminism. Art is a reflection
of our culture and values, expressing how we
regard the issues of our time. The title ‘Unfinished
Business’ aptly highlights our current situation –
where Australian women still experience a gender
pay gap of over 15%,1 there are only 25% of women
on ASX 200 boards,2 and women are 75% of art
school graduates but only 34% of artists exhibited
in our state museums and galleries.3 This exhibition
provides an important and timely opportunity to
explore and debate the progress of Australian
women through the lens of feminist art.
A Trawalla Foundation priority is to invest in
organisations that challenge the gender imbalance
and strengthen the representation of women –
including in politics, business, media and the arts.
We have catalysed programs such as ‘Pathways
to Politics’ for Australian women (in partnership
with the University of Melbourne), funded
innovative gender research by Professor Cordelia
Fine, and founded organisations such as the
Women’s Leadership Institute. Importantly, we also
support and celebrate women artists, writers and
producers through initiatives such as the Stella
Prize and She-Doc.
We are delighted to be partners in this thought-
provoking exhibition, and congratulate Max
Delany and the ACCA team for their innovation
and impact.
Carol Schwartz AM
Chair, Trawalla Foundation
1 https://www.wgea.gov.au/addressing-pay-equity/what-gender-
pay-gap
2 http://aicd.companydirectors.com.au/advocacy/board-diversity/
statistics
3 http://countesses.blogspot.com.au/
Linda Marrinon
What I must bear 1982
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
172.0 x 203.0 cm
Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art
8 University of Western Australia 9
FOREWORD ACCA is proud to present Unfinished
Business: Perspectives on art and feminism,
We also extend heartfelt thanks to Margaret
Morgan and Wesley Phoa, Lead Donors to the
contribution will add nuance and perspective,
extending the relevance of the exhibition to
Linda Mickleborough a major exhibition illuminating a critical exhibition. We appreciative their significant a great diversity of people and enhancing its
period in recent contemporary art practice. ongoing support of ACCA’s programs, and their impact over time.
Continuing ACCA’s ongoing series of Big enthusiastic response to the feminist contentions
Picture exhibitions focussing on contemporary of the exhibition. From a personal perspective, this exhibition, with
art’s relationship to wider social, cultural and its trans-generational, multi-voiced, community
political contexts, Unfinished Business presents We are honoured to have received the support from connected, feminist approach is deeply resonant.
an exciting and timely opportunity to reflect the Victorian Government’s Office of Prevention & As a young woman my first role in the arts
on the many achievements of feminism and Women’s Equality, and we thank Natalie Hutchins was at the Community Arts Board (CAB) of the
the challenges that remain. The exhibition is MP, Minister for Women, for her commitment and Australia Council. This was at the time of Vivienne
accompanied by an ambitious series of artist support of public and professional development Binns’ ground-breaking feminist, community
talks, performances, symposia, education programs. ACCA would also like to acknowledge project Mothers’ memories others’ memories
programs, film screenings and discussions, the work of Fiona Richardson MP, and note the 1980. I got to know Viv through the Director
making space for a great diversity of voices. sadness of her passing during the planning stages of the CAB, Andrea Hull, who had become a
of the exhibition. mentor and a friend. It was exciting for me, as a
How could an exhibition such as this be anything young self-identified feminist firebrand, to have
but collaboratively conceived and made? ACCA Our other significant partners include the this connection to Mothers’ memories others’
is delighted to be working with an extraordinary University of Melbourne, who have contributed to memories, a work that reframed women’s creative
number of outstanding artists, partners the depth of the public programs that will unfold practice within a feminist, social and political
and collaborators to realise this ambitious across the exhibition; SHEILA: a foundation for context. A couple of years later my close friend
undertaking. We would like to extend our sincere women in the visual arts, with whom we are Jen Saunders, then also in her early twenties,
thanks and appreciation to the artists, our pleased to present a series of public symposiums, worked with Viv to create the archive for Mothers’
collaborators, partners, donors and staff. and the inaugural SHEILA lecture; and our memories others’ memories, putting slides
Exhibition Partners Dulux and Jackson Clements between plates of glass and labelling the images.
Unfinished Business has been developed by a Burrows Architects. And we are also pleased to Then, only a few months ago, my daughter (now
curatorial team that includes Paola Balla, Julie present the exhibition in dialogue with a parallel in her early twenties) called to ask if I knew of the
Ewington, Vikki McInnes and Elvis Richardson, program of residencies and performances, Doing artist Vivienne Binns, as she had been engaged by
working in collaboration with ACCA’s Artistic Feminism: Sharing the World, led by Professor Viv to digitise images from the Mothers’ memories
Director and CEO Max Delany and Senior Curator Anne Marsh, which culminates in February 2018 archive. To witness another young woman engage
Annika Kristensen. The exhibition features the with a major conference and symposium. with the legacy of this work, decades after its
critical, inspiring work of over seventy artists, inspirational effect on me, has been deeply
film-makers and collaborators, to whom we are Artist Emily Floyd and design legend Mary moving. I anticipate that there will be many
especially grateful. Featherston have been commissioned to create works from the extraordinary range of artists and
a ‘round table’ that serves both as a central practices in Unfinished Business that will inspire
We are also grateful to the writers who have sculptural presence and gathering space for across generations in different ways.
contributed insightful essays to this publication, conversation, discussion and debate at the heart
and to the curators of the film program, Helen of the exhibition. As well as being a place for Asking why feminism is still relevant, necessary
Grace, Femflix (Dr Jacqueline Millner, Jane curated events, the round table will welcome and critical today, Unfinished Business embodies
Schneider and Deborah Szapiro), Kym Maxwell artists and community members throughout feminist methodologies and explores trans-
and Laura Castagnini. Additionally, we thank the the course of Unfinished Business, generously generational legacies through the work of
many artists, academics, historians, feminists, supported by Lou and Will McIntyre. established and emerging artists. We anticipate
among a wide range of presenters contributing to that the exhibition and accompanying film,
the public programs and performance series. Our appreciation goes to our wonderful ACCA performance, public and education programs will
staff, the indefatigable install crew, skilfully be inspiring, polemical, humorous, irreverent and
We are especially thankful for the involvement led by Exhibition Manager Samantha Vawdrey, thought-provoking. We hope that you will join the
of the Trawalla Foundation, Lead Partner for and terrific interns Eloise Breskvar and Brigid conversation.
Unfinished Business. Our warm appreciation to Hansen, for all their work in bringing Unfinished
Carol Schwartz AM, Trawalla Chair, for embracing Business to fruition. I would particularly like to
the ambitious aims of the exhibition and acknowledge Anabelle Lacroix, curator of the
associated programs and then extending our extensive public and performance program and
ambition through introductions to her extensive Eliza Devlin and ACCA’s Education team for the
networks, including the Women’s Leadership development of the education programs and
Institute Australia and University of Melbourne’s resources set to engage students from primary
Pathways to Politics Program. Thank you to Sarah to tertiary levels throughout the course of the
Buckley, Dr Meredith Martin and Amy Mullins for exhibition.
their contributions to these conversations.
All of our artists, collaborators, partners and staff
bring different and important contributions to
Unfinished Business. We are grateful that each
10 11
The Cross Art Projects, Sydney [producer]
Future Feminist Archive 2016
Lip Collective Deborah Kelly
Lip, no.8, 1984 La Lucha Continua 2016
Australian feminist arts journal archival pigment ink on cotton rag
12 Collection: Lesley Alway 50.0 x 70.0 cm 13
UNFINISHED BUSINESS Feminism’s influence on art and society has previously accorded minor status within the patriarchal bias, seeking equal representation
been profound, and enduring. It has dramatically canon of modernist art history. The development of women artists through advocacy and
reshaped contemporary art practice in Australia of inclusive, collaborative and socially-engaged activism; organising separatist and alternative
Max Delany and internationally, in a complex history of art practices, democratic modes of production spaces for the exhibition and distribution of
dynamic relationships with wider social relations and distribution, and new forms of collective women’s cultural practices; intervening in
and discourse. It is now fifty years since Vivienne labour, cultural activism and institutional the site of art-historical production – through
Binns’ legendary 1967 exhibition Vag Dens at critique, owe much to the ground-breaking feminist collectives and journals, study groups
Watters Gallery in Sydney introduced ‘central initiatives of so-called second-generation or and academia, slide registers and archives,
core imagery’ into the visual lexicon, critically ‘women’s movement feminisms’ of the 1970s. etc. – and positing the existence of a ‘female
affirming the power of women’s sexuality whilst aesthetic’ or ‘sensibility’, along with ideals of
also provoking – through repeated images of With roots in social change and activism, and gender difference.4
the vagina dentata – a good measure of seeking different ways of being in the world,
castration anxiety amongst the patriarchy. It feminisms in the 1970s took many forms, also Whilst equality of access and representation in a
is more than forty years since International coinciding with, and propelling, wider political political and legal sense remained, and remains
Women’s Year in 1975 built on the grassroots engagements with indigenous and civil rights today, of singular importance, psychoanalytic
activism of a then nascent feminist art movement movements, and anti-war, ecological and and post-structural feminisms sought to
in Australia, with its influential collectives – the counter-cultural positions. At stake was the critically analyse the very question
Sydney’s Women’s Art Movement formed in reformist notion of attaining equal rights and of representation itself. These approaches
1974, the Women’s Art Register in Melbourne in representation for women in culture and law. focussed on the gendered nature of
1975 and, in the following year, the Women’s Art Marxist and socialist feminisms, for instance, representation, on how women were
Movement in Adelaide and Lip: A Journal saw women’s oppression as an effect of social, represented, and how identity and experience
of Women in the Visual Arts in Melbourne. In economic and class conditions under capitalism are subject to institutionalised, unconscious
1975 American feminist critic Lucy Lippard’s and patriarchy. But the question of equal bias – how we as individuals are ‘born into
visit to Australia was instrumental in contributing rights, and the notion of representation itself, language’, and already written by patriarchy,
to and energising these initiatives, which were radically called into question by schools of capitalism, media, family and religion.5
included significant exhibitions and contributions feminism which drew upon the psychoanalytic Analysis of the ways women (and others) have
to art history and academia. These included theories of Freud and Lacan, along with French been offered up to the mastery of the male
Janine Burke’s Australian Women Artists: post-structuralism, to take account of the ways gaze served to divert attention away from
1840–1940 at the Ewing and George Paton in which identity and sexual difference are representations of ‘women’ and onto the mode
Galleries at the University of Melbourne in 1975; socially inducted and psychically constructed.3 of representation itself; how we see things,
the first feminist academic programs, taught In these two historically coincident yet how images are constructed. These critiques
by Jude Adams in Sydney and Ann Stephen conceptually differentiated positions – socialist of ideology, and of patriarchal ways of seeing
in Melbourne, which came in 1976; and major feminisms that called for equality and freedom, and being, also foregrounded the nature of
initiatives such as The Women’s Show, organised and psychoanalytic feminisms that stressed femininity as masquerade, of sexuality as pose,
by Julie Ewington and others in the WAM in the fundamental psycho-social construction of imposition and imposture, and of identity as
Adelaide in 1977, which saw feminist art practices gender identity and sexual difference – we see performative,6 ideas which were promulgated
capture the imagination on a national scale.1 divergent feminisms sit side by side, between by directorial modes of photography and
representational politics and the politics of performance art which situated the gendered
Feminism was never singular, but plural representation, on diverse fronts that have body at the centre of the action.
and polyphonic. As Cornelia Butler declares, continued to shape broad developments in both
‘feminism’s impact on art of the 1970s art and popular culture. As a result of the critiques of representation
constitutes the most influential international that feminist practice and discourse has
‘movement’ of any during the postwar period In the former case, feminism called for engendered over more than four decades,
– in spite or perhaps because of the fact that economic independence, equal pay and access feminism itself has been subject to
it seldom cohered, formally or critically, into to employment; for a redistribution of the considerable critique and debate, opening
a movement...’2 Feminism’s influence has division of labour between the sexes; and for up to wider considerations of class, race,
dramatically expanded ideas of what art can the affirmation of sexual freedom, orientation ethnicity and non-binary gender positions.
be. It spurred radical and hybridised practices and reproductive rights. These found parallels at Aboriginal academic and activist Aileen
encompassing performance, installation, film, art institutional levels – in the identified absence Moreton-Robinson’s compelling analysis of
photography and video. It validated women’s or under-representation of women artists in the ‘whiteness’ of Australian feminism and its
experience, domestic subjects, and what had exhibitions, museum collections, art history and effect on Indigenous women revealed blind
traditionally been considered ‘women’s work’ academia. Over successive decades feminist spots in earlier feminisms, pointing to the
– craft, decorative arts and textile practices, artists and critics have challenged the art world’s privilege of white middle-class feminism and
14 15
its allegiance to the forces of colonisation.7 Unfinished Business constitutes one nexus
Gender-queer and trans identities have now of the shifting energies and articulations
radically debunked binary understandings of of contemporary feminism. Adopting
identity as fixed and biologically determined a collaborative, polyphonic form that
– challenging essentialist feminist positions, encourages diverse voices, practices and
and normative conceptions of sex and gender, debates, Unfinished Business reflects upon
that failed to account for variation, difference these histories and their legacies in the
and the possibilities of change – instead present, through new commissions and
promoting understandings of gender as recent work, presented alongside selected
performative, psycho-socially informed or historical projects, and programs of film and
acquired rather than biologically determined.8 performance. Importantly, the exhibition is
And the dystopian dreams of cyberfeminism, not intended as an historiographic survey of
which embraced the zeros in the binary code feminist art practices in Australia – this too
as productive holes and tunnels of escape still remains to be done.12
from their upright counterparts, the number
ones, have since ‘given the finger to binaries’ Rather, Unfinished Business focuses upon
altogether.9 As the writer Eleanor Penny inter-generational dialogues, the passing of
recently stated at the Post-Cyber Feminist the torch back and forth between generations,
International 2017: ‘The future is not what it with a primary, inevitably partial, focus on the
used to be’.10 contemporary context, and the ‘unfinished
business’ of feminism today. Conceived to
• animate critical, although under-represented,
practices and debates within contemporary
Today, in the public sphere, notwithstanding Australian art and society, Unfinished Business
the many gains and breakthroughs resulting explores the dynamic formal invention and social
from feminism’s social impact and cultural engagement of feminist artists; strategies and
influence, much remains to be done. In recent analyses of gender identity and representation;
years contemporary feminism has enjoyed the productive complexity of intersectional
renewed and timely public interest in Australia politics and diverse ways of being; and practices
and internationally – evidenced by Julia which embrace performative codes, text and
Gillard’s now famous misogyny speech of media technologies, humour and critique.
2012, and the Women’s Marches in January
2017, which saw an estimated five million A number of intersecting threads weave
demonstrators take to the streets worldwide dynamically through Unfinished Business, in
to advocate for transformative social change. dialogue and debate. A fundamental strand
Closer to home, Elvis Richardson’s project running through decades of Australian feminist
The CoUNTess Report has exposed patterns work is a critical engagement, and often
of gender inequality and ageism in the visual subversive or incendiary play, with language,
arts. Women still remain under-represented image, text, and media – from the wry and
in museum collections and exhibition irreverent announcements of FEMMO magazine
programs, and in the media and academia, bill-posters to the pulsating, transgressive,
which reflects wider structural inequalities corporeal language of Linda Dement’s three-
related to women’s employment, income and channel video Feminist methodology machine
the division of labour.11 Most alarming are the 2016. Kelly Doley’s Things learnt about feminism
shocking levels of domestic violence, sexual #1–95 2014 mobilises witty aphorisms and
harassment and abuse, that have been at lessons learned through the collaborative
the forefront of urgent public conversations work of consciousness-raising, activism and
nationally and internationally. As one of the inter-generational dialogue, to speak to the
slogans from the Women’s March proclaimed: inherent contradictions and complexities of the
‘I can’t believe I still have to protest this movement, and Maria Kozic’s billboard Bitch
fucking shit’ – a sentiment echoed in a neon 1990, and Sarah Goffman’s I am with you 2017,
work by artist Kate Just which simply exclaims: project women’s voices in the public sphere,
‘Furious’. speaking loud and proud, as do posters from
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
Aesthetic Suicide 2013
installation view
World Food Books, Melbourne
Courtesy the artists and Neon Parc,
Melbourne
16 photograph: Joshua Petherick 17
diverse print portfolios since the 1970s. Alive Questions of class, race and colonisation a problem left to women to solve. Dissolving Ideas, Blackwell, Oxford, 1992, pp. 928–936.
to discourses across the decades, Janet are crucial to the intention that Unfinished sexism in turn becomes more unpaid labour for 6 raig Owens, ‘Posing’, in Difference: On representation and
C
Burchill and Jennifer McCamley’s installation Business should explore urgent contemporary women. Women are sick of solving problems sexuality, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1985,
p.7.
Aesthetic suicide 2013 reawakens the bristling, intersections of feminist and community men benefit from’.15 Recalling Mierle Laderman
7 Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Talkin’ Up to the White Woman:
incendiary, avant-garde poetics of Valerie issues. Extraordinarily diverse expressions of Ukeles celebrated 1973 performance Washing/ Indigenous Women and Feminism, University of Queensland
Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto, and its critical these matters are central to the paintings of Tracks/Maintenance – in which the artist washed Press, St. Lucia, 2000.
analysis of the position of western women Sandra Hill, the poetry and textual weaving of the floor of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum 8 S
ee, for example, Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and
under capitalism. Burchill/McCamley’s films Natalie Harkin, the sculptural and performative in Hartford, Connecticut, drawing attention to the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, 1990.
Silver bullets 1982 and SCUM tapes 68– works of Ali Gumillya Baker and Salote Tawale, the invisible, lowly paid underclass of women 9 S
ee Linda Dement, ‘Cyberfeminist Bedsheet’, pp. 68–69, in this
96 1996/2013, accompanied by graphic posters and Cigdem Aydemir’s performative videos and migrants that service cultural institutions publication.
and wall texts, are presented alongside copies Extremist activity 2011–12 which explore ideas – Thomas’ inversion of Laderman Ukeles’ 10 C
ited in Joanna Walsh, ‘Post-Cyber Feminist International 2017’,
of Solanas’ manifesto, first published in 1967, of freedom and constraint in relation to the performance calls upon those with privilege to Frieze, 28 November 2017, accessed at https://frieze.com/article/
post-cyber-feminist-international-2017
which, lamented that ‘no aspect of society complexity of body politics experienced by ‘clean up the mess that is gender discrimination’.
11 S
ee The Countess Report, http://thecountessreport.com.au/
being at all relevant to women, there remains Australian Muslim women, playfully amplifying It signals, as Anne Marsh writes of this work, and Deb Verhoeven’s investigation into gender inequality in
to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking stereotypical representations of Islam and ‘that we are still working, still protesting after research funding in Australia, https://www.google.com.au/amp/
amp.abc.net.au/article/9178786, and in the film industry, https://
females only to overthrow the government, the politicising of the veil. The disorienting all these years and it calls on men to stand as theconversation.com/women-arent-the-problem-in-the-film-
eliminate the money system, institute complete performance of identity and the polymorphous feminists. To do the work that feminists have industry-men-are-68740.
automation, and destroy the male sex’.13 nature of gender fluidity are today increasingly been doing over and over again during the last 12 O
ne such endeavour is Anne Marsh’s ARC funded research
important positions, variously apparent in fifty-plus years in the art world and beyond. It project Art and Feminism in Australia since 1970, which seeks
‘to investigate the impact of feminism on contemporary
The archival turn in recent feminist art practice works by Hissy Fit, Archie Barry, Embittered is time for men to lend a hand, to do the work, Australian art and to critically interpret the history of feminism
now recuperates these diverse histories as Swish, Spence Messih and Madison Bycroft; not just pay lip service to an imagined feminist and its influence on the ways in which Australian society views
representations of women across cultural differences’. http://
important sites of rediscovery, ‘revealing’, as whilst relations of power, sexuality, technology position’.16 annemarsh.com.au/research_council.php
Jude Adams has suggested, ‘fragments or and the media consumption and production 13 Valerie Solanas, S.C.U.M. Manifesto, [1967], accessed at http://
traces of forgotten narratives that when pieced of femininity and womanhood, are embedded kunsthallezurich.ch/sites/default/files/scum_manifesto.pdf
1 or chronologies of Australian feminist art exhibitions, projects
F
together can disrupt established histories in works by Lyndal Walker and Giselle and programs, see Barbara Hall, ‘The women’s liberation 14 S
ee Jude Adams, Remembering The Women’s Show, ACE Open,
yielding other meanings, telling other stories’.14 Stanborough. movement and the visual arts: a selected chronology, 1969-90’, Adelaide, 26 August–16 September 2017, accessed at http://
in Catriona Moore (ed.), Dissonance: Feminism and the Arts aceopen.art/exhibitions/remembering-womens-show/
Inter-generational dialogues and archival 1970-1990, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 1993, pp. 277–284;
excavation are inherent to a number of projects Some venerable feminist icons continue to and the Australian Feminist Art Timeline, accessed at https:// 15 N
at Thomas, Artist’s notes sent in email correspondence, 21
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_feminist_art_timeline November 2017.
in Unfinished Business, including Alex Martinis recur: central core imagery representing
Roe’s It was about opening the very notion that women’s sexuality appears in Frances (Budden) 2 ornelia Butler, ‘Art and Feminism: An ideology of shifting
C 16 nne Marsh, cited by Nat Thomas in email correspondence, 24
A
criteria’, in Cornelia Butler (ed.), Whack! Art and the feminist November 2017.
there was a particular perspective 2015–17. This Phoenix’s Queen of Spades 1975, in Fiona revolution, MIT Press, Cambridge and London, 2007, p. 15.
engages diverse perspectives on the histories Foley’s devastating Black velvet 1996 and 3 975 was also the year that Laura Mulvey published her now
1
of earlier feminist movements through in Hannah Raisin’s Fold 2015. The casting of canonical essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, (written
in 1973), which theorised sexual difference and deconstructed
interviews, contemporary footage and archival ‘negative space’ to reveal a sculptural presence the idea of the ‘male gaze’, Juliet Mitchell published
film, focussing on a network of alliances which is at the core of Sophie Takách’s Evert Manifold Psychoanalysis and Feminism, and Mary Kelly was conceiving
her Post-Partum Document 1973-77. See Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual
coalesced around the 1973 ‘Philosophy Strike’ 95cc 2017, a bronze cast of the interior of the Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen, vol.16, no.3, 1975,
aimed at securing feminist courses at the artist’s vagina, which inverts the idea of the pp. 6–18; and Juliet Mitchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism,
Penguin, London, 1975.
University of Sydney, spanning members of the phallus as privileged signifier, upsetting the
Sydney Filmmakers Cooperative, Feminist Film idea of women characterised in Freudian 4 or Australian contexts, see Sandy Kirby, Sightlines: Women’s
F
Art and Feminist Perspectives in Australia, Craftsman House,
Workers and Builders Labourers Federation. terms of absence or ‘lack’ in relation to man’s Sydney, 1992; Catriona Moore (ed.), Dissonance: Feminism
and the Arts 1970-1990, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 1993; and
And at the heart of the exhibition sits Mary ‘presence’. Jacqueline Millner, Catriona Moore & Georgina Cole, ‘Art and
Featherston and Emily Floyd’s collaboration Feminism: Twenty-First Century Perspectives’, Australian and
New Zealand Journal of Art, vol. 15, no. 2, 2015, pp. 143-149,
The round table 2017. An open-form sculptural The idea of continually doing the arduous, accessed at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/144343
installation and discursive gathering space, it incomplete work of feminism underpins the 18.2015.1089816
is based on a 1977 design by Mary Featherston contentions of Unfinished Business. A reiterating 5 or Jacques Lacan the subject is constituted in language, and
F
for Ripple magazine, inspired by the example image/action over the course of the exhibition in the discourse of patriarchy, which ‘lays down the elementary
structures of culture’, in ‘The agency of the letter...’, Ecrits,
of feminist collectives, editorial groups and is Nat Thomas’ durational performance Man Tavistock Publications, London, 1977, pp. 147–148; and that
community consciousness-raising, which so cleaning up 2017; it features a privileged white the ‘unconscious is constituted by the effects of speech on the
subject’ [... and] ‘consequently, the unconscious is structured
often issued from the domestic context of the man on his hands and knees cleaning the gallery like a language’, in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-
Analysis, W.W. Norton & Co., New York and London, 1977, p.
kitchen table. floor, bucket and scrubbing brush in hand, 149. For Louis Althusser, ideology shapes subjectivity and
and wearing a hi-vis vest ‘so we won’t miss identity, with individuals born into, or preceded by ideological
state institutions. See Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological
his small public gesture’. Thomas notes that State Apparatuses’, [1970], in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood
‘like many gender role expectations, sexism is (eds.), Art in Theory 1900–1990: An Anthology of Changing
18 19Vivienne Binns
Mothers’ memories others’ memories 1980
prints, installation, photo-screenprint,
printed in colour vitreous enamels, from
multiple stencils; prints attached by nylon Vivienne Binns
line to anodised steel metal postcard rack Repro vag dens 3 1976
52.0 x 60.0 cm (95 pieces) vitreous enamel on steel
Blacktown City Art Collection 40.5 x 30.5 cm
20 Blacktown Arts Centre, Sydney Courtesy the artist 21Mary Featherston
Ripple 1977 (cover design),
community childcare newsletter no.11,
December 1977
Courtesy the artist
22 Photograph: Fred Kroh 23UNFINISHED FEMINISM, The first business of feminism is action. included in Unfinished Business.3 For the entire and at variance with itself, because part of itself
Purposeful action, deeds as much as words. point of (Budden) Phoenix’s marrying women’s is the knowledge that selves are only parts –
UNCEASING ACTIVISM: (And speech is, of course, also action.) The fancywork with vulval imagery was to make always unfixed and unruly’.5 Precisely. Now over
AUSTRALIAN ART OVER FIVE point always was, still is, the urgent necessity experimental conjunctions between images and forty years in the making, it’s a rich complex
for change. From wage justice to reproductive materials that opened up fresh articulations for brew. And still in progress.
DECADES rights, from domestic violence to challenging women, rather than closing them down.
sexist representations in the media, from
Julie Ewington representation in legislatures and industry to Nearly twenty years later, Fiona Foley used 1 To take one example, see Toni Robertson, Justice for Violet and
Bruce Roberts 1980, a large fabric banner now in the collection
public recognition of women’s achievements: this same vulval form to make a stinging of the National Museum of Australia, which was used in the
‘Free Violet and Bruce Roberts Campaign’ by the Women Behind
Australian feminists have secured social, political denunciation of Australia’s shameful history Bars organisation; this campaign ultimately led to revision of
and cultural change at least since the 1880s. of sexual abuse of Aboriginal women, with its laws in NSW regarding provocation to murder in cases of long-
standing domestic violence.
political freight into the present. In Black Velvet
2 A classic account is Lucy Lippard’s in From the Center: Feminist
By the 1970s, activism was central to the newly- 1996, titled for a sexualising nickname given essays on Women’s Art, E. P. Dutton and Co., New York, 1976.
formed Australian women’s art groups and to Aboriginal women, she applied the form 3 Frances (Budden) Phoenix died in July 2017 after a long career
as an activist, first in Sydney in the 1970s as a poster-maker and
actions — from 1973 onwards in Sydney, for on a set of cotton dilly bags, to devastating leading figure in the Women’s Domestic Needlework Group,
instance, women made posters for campaigns, effect. Like Phoenix, Foley links gender with then from the 1980s in Adelaide under the name Frances
Phoenix, working across various media including painting,
banners for demonstrations, and designed labour, but the reiterated bags allude to the embroidery, community arts projects and graphics.
leaflets.1 And as feminism turned artists into many Aboriginal women enslaved in white 4 Fiona Foley, from the unpublished draft manuscript of her
activists, this mobilisation also, conversely, households, very often in sexual service. Since PhD thesis Biting the Clouds: The Aboriginals Protection and
Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, 1897, in progress with
spawned new forms of art – new images, the 1980s Foley has consistently investigated Griffith University, 2017, kindly supplied by the artist.
materials and methodologies. In an explosion the lived experience of Aboriginal women – 5 See Amelia Groom, ‘~ A’, catalogue essay for Yes and No: Things
Learnt About Feminism, Boxcopy, Brisbane, 2014, accessed 6
of commitment-driven innovation, assertion her Stud Gins 2003 is another indictment of November 2017 at https://boxcopy.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/
searched for expression, equally fuelled Australian treatment of Aboriginal women, kelly-doley-yes-and-no.pdf
by passion and thoughtfulness. This active counter-posing the ostensible warmth of
discursive drive has persisted over subsequent blankets with bald descriptors: Aboriginal;
decades, as we see in one key feminist trope: in Women; Property; Defiled; Ravished; Shared;
works by Frances (Budden) Phoenix, Fiona Foley Discarded. Both works turn on the use (and
and Kelly Doley that deal differently with the abuse) of textiles, stuff associated with
classic vaginal or vulval icon. domestic life, which in Foley’s hands are shown
to be sad instruments of colonisation. As she
For this icon was the site of a struggle for remarks, this body of work was inspired by
feminist ways of acting in and on the world. historical accounts of ‘Queensland’s white
In the early 1970s, a key feminist affirmation forefathers who perpetrated sexual and
of women’s sexual power was embodied in physical violence on Aboriginal men, women
this vulval form, then known as ‘central core and children.’4
imagery’ by proponents, like the American
Judy Chicago, who were looking for an Through innovative activist intersections
authentically female image.2 Female assertion is between the classic female icon and women’s
always excellent, and the vulval oval has been needlework, Frances (Budden) Phoenix and
celebrated in times and cultures as various Fiona Foley exemplify the rich corpus of feminist
as ancient Australian Aboriginal rock carvings ideas and strategies in Australia from the 1970s
and modern Italian feminist street marches. until the present. But the last word goes to
But the essentialist claim that ‘central core Kelly Doley and her 95 activist-seeming posters
imagery’ was inherently female (and therefore collected into Things learnt about feminism 2014.
implicitly unchanging) was a lousy rationale Among celebrations of feminist achievement
for activism, as Frances (Budden) Phoenix and and campaign slogans, one reads ‘Central Core
Marie McMahon demonstrated when they – No More?’ on a pink ground. And another
resisted Chicago’s canonical ‘central core’ proclaims ‘Yes to Contradictions’: with its bold
imagery, as well as her authoritarian working graphics and bright fluoro colours, the work is an
practices, with knowing resistant play – look at endorsement of activism, but it’s also a tribute
no goddesses no mistresses (anarcho-feminism) to the density of contemporary feminism. As
1978 and OUR STORY/HERSTORY? Working Amelia Groom noted, Doley’s work is ‘a portrait
on… Judy Chicago’s ‘Dinner Party’ 1982, both of feminism as difference; full of contradictions
24 25Frances (Budden) Phoenix Frances (Budden) Phoenix
Get your abortion laws off our bodies 1980 Queen of spades 1975
filet crochet milk-jug cover, pink beads, (previously known as Kunda 1976)
carpet fragment mounted on board found doily on cotton, plastic zipper
27.0 x 36.0 cm 50.0 x 42.0 x 3.0 cm
Collection of the Estate of the artist Collection of Toni Robertson, Sydney
26 Photograph: Andrew Curtis Photograph: Andrew Curtis 27Fiona Foley
Black velvet 1996
cotton fabric with cotton appliqué
9 bags: 99.0 x 20.0 cm (with handle, each);
180.0 x 200.0 cm (overall dimensions variable)
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of
28 Modern Art, Brisbane 29Kelly Doley
Things learnt about feminism #1–95 2014 (details)
ink on card
95 sheets, each 60.0 x 52.0 cm
Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art
30 University of Western Australia 31THANK YOU ‘How would you describe your feminism?’ the many productive conversations along the way:
artist asks, as I sit down. We are in a suburban with my curatorial colleagues,15 with artists,16
café, strangers at this point, and the provoca- with friends and family.17 For every one story,
Annika Kristensen tion hangs in midair like a challenge. It’s a good there is another. For every argument, a count-
question, and not one that I had a ready answer er-argument. What appears to me to be import-
for.1 My feminism changes daily, as I do. ant is that we are heard, and that we listen.
The world around us changes in fast and often
Later, I find myself in another café, with yet an- complicated ways. And while feminism can be
other artist. She is close to my mother’s age and contested and conflicting, it can also offer a
has a daughter around mine. There is a softness helpful language to discuss the injustices and
about her, but I sense that has not always been inequalities that women continue to face. As the
the case. ‘Your generation are much kinder than movement grows to encompass an expanded
we were. We were so angry all the time’, she agenda, and to address the intersectional and
says. I leave wondering if I should be angrier, lived experiences of women, genderqueer and
and silently thanking her generation for the role transgender people with diverse racial, cultural
that they have played in some of the reasons and economic circumstances, the need to attend
why I am not.2 to ‘unfinished business’ is evermore pressing.
There is still more work to be done, and until it
Of course I am, at times, angry – sometimes is, we should all be feminists.18
even furious.3 We should all be. Anger brings
1 Thank you Ainslie Templeton
about change. But as women we are told that
2 Thank you Helen Grace
anger is unbecoming. We are conditioned from
3 Thank you Kate Just
childhood to be quiet and courteous, praised for 4 Thank you Linda Marrinon
colouring between the lines. Consequently, I am 5 Thank you Frances (Budden) Phoenix
also, all too often, sorry4 – a fact, that in itself, 6 Thank you Shevaun Wright
quietly makes me mad. 7 Thank you Virginia Fraser and Elvis Richardson
8 Thank you Narelle Desmond
Mostly, I am dismayed. Dismayed, that in 2017 – 9 Thank you Fiona Foley
despite our celebrations and victories – women 10 Thank you Natalie Thomas
around the world are still fighting for reproduc- 11 Thank you Maria Kozic
12 Thank you Archie Barry
tive freedom;5 still the victims of rape and other
13 Thank you Ali Baker
forms of violence, that are defined, and at times
14 Thank you Sarah Goffman
legitimised, by a patriarchal legal system;6 still
15 Thank you Elvis, Julie, Paola, Vikki and Max
arguing for equal representation and pay in the 16 Thank you all
workforce;7 still sexualised from childhood – and 17 Thanks mum!
then demonised for exploring or expressing 18 Thank you Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
their sexuality;8 still challenging stereotypes
of racialised sexuality;9 still beholden to the
mirror;10 still encountering damaging represen-
tations of themselves in popular culture and
the media;11 still reconciling that their non-bi-
nary gender is largely absent from that same
media;12 still having their own histories written
about or erased, as they continue to suffer the
ongoing effects of colonisation;13 still needing to
take to the streets, to defiantly protest the rights
of women as human rights.14
In the course of planning this exhibition I have
returned often to the question asked of me by
the artist in that suburban café, and sought to
define my understanding of feminism both as
a movement and a term. This has resulted in
32 33Linda Marrinon
Kate Just Sorry! 1982
Furious 2015 synthetic polymer paint on canvas
neon text, black paint 59.5 x 87.5 x 4.5 cm
20.0 x 59.0 x 5.0 cm Collection: Museum of Contemporary Art
34 City of Port Phillip Collection, Melbourne Australia, Sydney 35Narelle Desmond
SLUTbag 2008
vinyl, pvc, plastic, card
110.0 x 220.0 cm
36 Courtesy the artist 37Maria Kozic
Bitch 1990
screen printed billboard
dimensions variable
38 Courtesy the artist 39I CAN’T BELIEVE I STILL On 21 January this year, an estimated five Invisible narratives and unheard voices are about opening the very notion that there was
million people world-wide took part in the brought to the fore in Natalie Harkin’s haunting a particular perspective 2015–17, which centres
HAVE TO PROTEST THIS Women’s March. Galvanised in response to the Archive Fever Paradox [2] 2014, which aims to around a strike at the University of Sydney
FUCKING SHIT inauguration of Donald Trump as U.S. President, disrupt and rupture the colonial archive. In the in 1973 that ultimately saw the philosophy
some 673 events across each of the seven work, the artist literally weaves together ’official’ department split, allowing a proposed – and
continents advocated for women’s rights and texts – South Australian Aboriginal affairs controversial – feminist course to proceed. While
Vikki McInnes other human rights issues including race legislation, Children’s Welfare Board case files Martinis Roe brings little known histories of
equality and Indigenous rights, LGBTIQ rights, and Aborigines Protection Board correspondence Australian feminism to light through her work,
immigration and healthcare reforms. The actions on her own family – with stories from the she also aims to raise contemporary feminist
were conceived to recognise and highlight women in her family themselves. Further she consciousness and facilitate inter-generational
that equality on numerous social and political engages both Indigenous and non-Indigenous feminist dialogues to think about possible
fronts remains elusive for women and for many archival modes, in both the spoken and the feminist futures.
minority groups. written word, to negotiate new positions of
agency. Harkin notes in relation to the work: Dialogue between and among feminists is
Artist Sarah Goffman has transformed these ‘Our voices may have been missing, but our also the basis of Kelly Doley’s Things learnt
live events into an archive of feminist activity resistance carries forward.’2 about feminism 2014. Comprising a suite of
in I am with you 2017, a vast installation 95 hand-painted posters, the work developed
of handmade cardboard placards, bearing Racist texts 2014/17 by Harkin’s Unbound out of a series of one-on-one conversations in
slogans from the protests themselves. With Collective collaborator, Ali Gumillya Baker which Doley asked a number of participants
its accumulation of aestheticised statements, functions as the dark heart of this exhibition. An from different backgrounds to teach her about
Goffman converts action into artwork, and archive of Indigenous representation, many of feminism. In a mode similar to that of Goffman,
agenda into legacy. Among the hundreds of the hundreds of books collected and presented she has transcribed the encounter between
slogans brandished during the marches, a sign by Baker feature palpably shocking titles such artist and participant into a feminist archive of
reading ‘I can’t believe I still have to protest as Down Among the Wild Men and The Sexual thought and imagination.
this fucking shit’ has become iconic both as Life of Savages while others are more insidious
image and as symbolic of what still remains in their racist content. Including both historical Elizabeth Gower’s Portrait of the artist as a
unresolved with regards to the projects of and contemporary examples, Racist texts serves young woman 1974–ongoing presents a quite
second and third wave feminists. as a stark reminder that racialised difference – literal archive: a history of a woman’s life, lived
and the concomitant discrepancies in power, in art. The vast project (from which a selection
In Time Binds, Elizabeth Freedman asserts experience and material conditions rendered by of some 50 images is presented here) not only
that artistic engagements (queer, feminist this difference – necessarily remains at the centre documents Gower and her artwork over the
etc.) with history are most compelling when of our unfinished business in Australia. past four decades, but also alludes to the social
they look to mine the present for ‘signs of and structural forces that impinge on it. With
undetonated energy from past revolutions’ The disjuncture between official policy and its glancing asides, Portrait of the artist as a
rather than simply avowing nostalgia for those women’s experience is also highlighted by young woman provides an alternative historical
past revolutionary moments themselves.1 Shevaun Wright in The rape contract 2016, narrative and invites us to consider what
Certainly, this notion of undetonated energy which interpolates personal narrative into a remains ‘unfinished’ in feminist discourses,
resonates keenly though numerous practices legal archive and framework. In annotating activisms and practices in Australia over the
represented in Unfinished Business, and an amended commercial services contract period. Indeed, unorthodox histories, narratives
many of the artists have engaged archives in with the words of her friend – a rape and languages run rampant throughout
various ways to position the past in meaningful survivor – Wright seeks to subvert systemic Unfinished Business as its artists mine and
and transformative relationships with the and institutionalised discrimination. Her repurpose the archive to protest, focus and
present. They activate the archive not only as feminist (and post-colonial) critique of the law reimagine our feminist past, present and future.
a conceptual space in which to rethink time, emphasises the tenuous contract between the
1 Elizabeth Freedman, Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer
history and progress against the grain of body politic, the social body and our individual Histories, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2010, p.
dominant narratives and ideologies, but also as bodies to devastating effect. xvi.
a framework through which to continue making 2 Natalie Harkin in Bound and Unbound: Sovereign Acts,
and legitimising forms of knowledge and Of course, as a key philosophical and ideological Yunggorendi First Nations Centre, Flinders University, Adelaide,
2014, p. 20.
cultural production that are otherwise rendered movement of the 20th century, feminism
invisible and deemed untenable. continues to influence the way we think about
social and political domains as well as the ways
we make and understand art. Alex Martinis Roe
uses archival methods and materials in It was
40 41Alex Martinis Roe
It was about opening the very notion that
there was a particular perspective 2015–17
three-channel video installation, HD video
and 16mm film
33:02 mins (total running time)
42 Courtesy the artist 43Elizabeth Gower
Portrait of the artist as a young Following pages:
woman 1974–2017 Sarah Goffman
photographs and digital prints I am with you 2017 (detail)
dimensions variable cardboard, permanent marker
Courtesy the artist, Sutton Gallery, dimensions variable
44 Melbourne and Milani Gallery, Brisbane Courtesy the artist 45Linda Dement, #60 (Thesis II) 2015, jute, wool, 46 modelling clay, bamboo, 256.0 x 143.5 cm 47
BLAK FEMALE FUTURISMS ‘Don’t let your racism drive your feminism’ removed. Aboriginal women will suffer thirty- like Aunty Edna Brown advocated for her people
stated artist, activist and Aboriginal warrior four times the amount of violence than white to be housed properly, to have health care,
AND YTE FEMINISM WAVES woman Arika Walau to the gathering of women will.5 We are not protected by the dignity in death and burial, and, ultimately, social
predominantly white women who attended colony and its so called justice system based justice. With their example, I can only hope that
Paola Balla the Matriarchs Speak panel as part of on a false ‘democracy that does not hold for a new future female authority can be imagined
the Sovereignty public programs at ACCA in us’, as curator and researcher Kimberley Kruger across cultures, as an antidote to whiteness,
early 2017.1 When we as black women are at stated in relation to colonial injury and repair male violence and colonisation, towards a
our most honest, we are often at our most of Peoples and Country.6 She related this to healing of the ongoing traumas and injuries that
vulnerable. There is no pretense in refusing the well-being of basket grass weaving by damage.
white feminism, we are not denouncing the master weaver Patricia Harrison. Art and acts
rights of other women, but are choosing and of reciprocity can be processes for repair from
stating our own way of being as sovereign ongoing colonial injuries, if they are self- 1 Meriki Onus, Matriarchs’ Speak, symposium, Australian Centre
for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 4 March 2017.
Aboriginal women warriors, as academic Tracey determined.
Bunda asserts.2 2 Tracy Bunda, ‘The sovereign Aboriginal woman’, in Aileen
Moreton-Robinson (ed.), Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous
In The rape contract 2016, artist and Sovereignty Matters. Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, 2007, pp.
I do not identify as a feminist. Feminism has lawyer Shevaun Wright starkly addresses 75-85.
failed us, as it was not designed for us. I say how continued marginalisation and distortion 3 Margaret Tucker, If everyone cared: autobiography of Margaret
this with awareness that I am a co-curator of of black and female voices within the legal Tucker M.B.E., Sydney, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1977, pp. 49-52.
a show about art and feminism, and stand in and art spheres continues. As I’m considering 4 Ali Gumillya Baker, Paola Balla, Kimberley Moulton and Nicole
Monks, Next Matriarch: Panel Discussion, ACE Open, Adelaide,
my black matriarchal knowing and doing with perceived glass ceilings and the reality of 15 October 2017.
this work. Our shared womanhood does not concrete jail floors, rations and child removal,
5 Bianca Hall, ‘Aboriginal women 34 times more likely to suffer
make us sisters with white women. Gender I’m keenly aware, as Taylor Crumpton has family violence, but fear reporting it,’ The Age, 12 July 2015,
does not trump race in Australia in 2017, and it noted, that black women can be known and accessed at http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/aboriginal-
women-34-per-cent-more-likely-to-suffer-family-violence-but-
did not negate race when white frontier women empowered in intersectionality – a term fear-reporting-it-20150709-gi8iwm>
turned their backs on us during the Frontier developed by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw
6 Kimberley Kruger, Kader Attia Symposium: La Colonie (SUD),
Wars, when their men raped our women in 1993 to describe the oppression individuals Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 11
and children, and stole Aboriginal children, face due to their position in society – November 2017.
including young girls like Aunty Marg Tucker,3 ‘composed of various class backgrounds, sexual 7 Taylor Crumpton, ‘How Black Women Have Impacted Feminism
Over Time’, Teen Vogue, 21 September 2017, accessed at https://
to clean their homes, cook their food, grow and orientations, and voices [...] From speaking www.teenvogue.com/story/how-black-women-have-impacted-
tend their gardens, wash their clothes, and look about issues of empowerment and suffrage to feminism-over-time
after their children as ‘domestics’. making the connections between race, ability 8 Pauline Whyman, spoken word performance, Fem&Ist Film
and gender into conversations around equality, Festival, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, 22
November 2017.
White women have not been passive, benign black women have long been teaching about
benefactors. They have actively participated the multifaceted and interlocking systems of 9 Pauline Whyman (director), Back Seat 2007, Scarlett Pictures Pty
Ltd, Sydney, 2007.
in the colonising and brutalising of Aboriginal oppressions that effected marginalised people.’7
people, as Aboriginal women’s herstories tell.
When Ali Gumillya Baker and I sat in At the Fem&Ist Film Festival 2017, actor and
conversation about the exhibition Next director Pauline Whyman named her ‘childless
Matriarch, my breath caught when she said she womb as a warzone and her heart as a partial
‘was unable to articulate the depth of grief and warzone, because she needs to let some light
despair enacted on the Aboriginal women’s body in to have hope’.8 In this moment she named
in this country’.4 White Australia is yet to address both historical, inter-generational, and fresh
the impacts of this violence. Baker’s stack wounds. She is a member of the Stolen
of Racist texts 2014/17 is a haunting and startling Generations and speaks her story through
manifestation of the depth, or ‘height’, of racism twelve-year-old girls’ eyes in her acclaimed short
in this country and the structural violence film Back Seat.9
enacted on Aboriginal women, men and children
on a daily basis. We have the ongoing daily work of resistance.
Preceding the first waves of feminism, Aboriginal
The ongoing privilege of white women and Torres Strait Islander women did the
continues. Indigenous women face a lower life unrecognised work of protesting the stealing of
expectancy, a greater chance of experiencing their children, and the condition on missions,
family violence, and of having our children reserves and streets like Fitzroy, where leaders
48 49You can also read
