Australian women artists still see grey skies when they look out of their studio windows. This study examines the experiences of women in the hierarchical Australian contemporary art scene.
What does it mean to present as a 'lesbian' artist? The very identity categories 'gay', 'lesbian', 'heterosexual' are extremely problematic. Now that 'I' am out, I find that I am in - inside a category that reduces rather than expands possibilities for me, not just as an artist, but as a person.
The artists were selected because their work embraces not only questions of gender, but also addresses the distinctive duality between the superficial look of things and the complex web of underlying meaning, desire, fear, experience, and memory that they have located and interpreted for us. Featured artists are Jane Eisemann, Jacqui Stockdale, K.T. Prescott, Helen Wright and Megan J Walch.
During the past 8 years or so there have been two distinctive strands of activity which women artists have pursued in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Both are concerned with questions of identity. Artists Fiona Pardington, Emily Karaka, Shona Davies, Christine Webster and Robyn Kahukiwa.
Review Bad Girls: Institute of Contemporary Art London 7 October - 5 December 1993. Using glamour, virginity and stardom to attract as wide an audience as possible to a show of supposedly anarchic women artists all hoping to confront notions of sexuality and gender was a smart, if questionable, move....