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.
Some reflections on a paper entitled the Horror of the Gaze. Art criticism is, perhaps, an art form and not expected primarily to make sense. There is no consensus about what art is, but we do seem to share an urge to understand what critics say about it.
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.
"Women in art must look to the future as they have no past" said Mary Cecil Allen at an opening of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors in 1935. A critical examination of the current art practices of women in Australia.
Women from non-English speaking backgrounds are adding another dimension to the picture of women in Australian art. Informed by other cultures and dealing with issues of ethnic difference, the images on these pages create a broader idea of what it is to be an Australian woman.
Women's courses since the 1970s have become a familiar if marginalised component of most art school curricula, their initial aim being to compensate for the absence of women in the Art History and Theory syllabus and to encourage the development of feminist art practices.