The last essay I contributed to Artlink examined recent curatorial efforts to insert Philippa Cullen (1950–1975) into the canon of Australian feminist performance art history. The revisionist energies amplifying the contributions of an emerging experimental artist of the early seventies, were institutionally performed via the National Gallery of Australia’s (NGA) Know My Name project. As important as the project has been in critically redressing gender imbalance and historical gaps in the NGA’s collection, it stirred great debate and highlighted the multitude of important female-identifying and non-binary artists, living and dead, who fail to cut through.

In August 2024 I joined Wollongong Art Gallery as its seventh director in its almost 50-year history. Immediately immersed in its large collection as a crash course in its cultural and sociopolitical contribution to Australian (largely regional) art history, I kept returning to the enigmatic work of a local and long-forgotten painter Joan Meats (1920–2003).