Colonial settlers made myriad objects with problematic portrayals of First Nations people. Now, a number of artists are using these objects in their work to retell these stories.
Women donning gorilla masks pose in front of the original Guerilla Girls posters, as part of the ‘Disobedient Objects’ exhibition at the V&A in 2014.
Eric Huybrechts/Wikimedia
We had no government funding, no governing structure and no workshop. Yet we produced a huge range of political posters, many of which are now in national collections and have been exhibited often.
Neel’s attention to the sensuous human subject, irrespective but mindful of race, gender, status and sexuality, was rare and undervalued, yet now seems prophetic.
The Mill at Tidmarsh by English artist Dora Carrington, from Frances Spalding’s The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between the Two World Wars.
Thames & Hudson
People in our experiments liked art by women – but believed women’s paintings are less attractive for investment.
In the cases of both sculptor Camille Claudel (1864-1943) and Britney Spears, we see situations where talented women were declared mentally unfit after family interventions.
(Wikimedia Commons/CP PICTURE ARCHIVE/Paul Chiasson)
Family members seeking to control women artists isn’t new. In the 1920s, doctors thought sculptor Camille Claudel could be released from the care of an asylum, but her family refused.
Clarice Beckett, Australia, 1887 - 1935, The red sunshade, 1932, Melbourne, oil on board; Gift of Alastair Hunter OAM and the late Tom Hunter in memory of Elizabeth through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 2019, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.
AGSA
Known for her soft capturing of tonal shifts and poignant moments, painter Clarice Beckett’s legacy was almost lost to time and decay. Now her work is being celebrated in a major exhibition.
The first female student at the famous Makerere University art school, Karuga only began an art career when she retired at 60. She ended up showing internationally.
Judith Beheading Holofernes, painted by Artemisia Gentileschi c. 1614-20.
Museo di Capodimonte, Napoli/Wikimedia Commons
50 years ago Art News published Linda Nochlin’s essay, Why have there been no great women artists? It would change how we see art and its institutions, and still reverberates today.
At a time when surrealists were objectifying women’s bodies, American artist Dorothea Tanning was looking deeper at the transformative potential of female experience and the unconscious.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne