Future Feminist Archive Report: Alison Alder, Louise Kate Anderson, Mini Graff, Deborah Kelly, Leonie Lane and Jan Davis (Country Women Artists, Northern Rivers Chapter), Fiona MacDonald, Raquel Ormella, Elvis Richardson and Lynette Riley. — 16 April to 7 May 2016

16 April to 7 May 2016

Future Feminist Archive Report ends a year-long project for the 40th anniversary of International Women’s Year whereby artists/researchers engaged with regional archives and collections to forge connections between diverse feminist histories and current ideas relating to feminism and archives.

Future Feminist Archive Report makes the project’s findings and speculations physically present. The FFA print set and web publication is being collated during the exhibition as reports come in. At the end of the exhibition, the Future Feminist Archive Print Folio will be distributed to the participating archives and institutions.

The project references and respects our commitment to feminism as a major art movement, a curatorial method and a force for change. These diverse archives reveal extraordinary women such as Pearl Gambanyi Gibbs, Dolly Potter and artist Vivienne Binns and their cultural and human rights monuments: the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA); the Miners’ Women’s Auxiliaries (wages and conditions); Binns’s Full Flight art caravan and the founding of the NSW regional galleries in the early 1980s; Joan Kerr’s National Women’s Art Project (1995) and today’s infamous craftivists the Knitting Nannas. Reviewing the past is a reminder that gender unfairly continues to affect women in the visual arts, as in all other creative areas. The struggle continues / La Lucha Continua.

Artists participating in the exhibition: Alison Alder, Louise Kate Anderson, Mini Graff, Deborah Kelly, Leonie Lane and Jan Davis (Country Women Artists, Northern Rivers Chapter), Fiona MacDonald, Raquel Ormella, Elvis Richardson and Lynette Riley.

Future Feminist Archive

Project Overview

Curator: Jo Holder

Participating Artists/Researchers and Associates, Archives and Institutions:

Alison Alder – working with Wollongong Art Gallery, University of Wollongong Archives
Louise Kate Anderson – working with the life and work of Pearl Gambanyi Gibbs in association with Lynette Riley, Dubbo Local Aboriginal Land Council, Big Fag Press
Brown Council – Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales Library and Archive, the life and work of Barbara Cleveland
Gillian Fuller – working with the DAAO (Design and Art Australia Online) UNSW Australia
Mini Graff – working with Wollongong Art Gallery, Wollongong City Library Local History Collection and Millers Point public housing
Deborah Kelly – working with Sydney Trades Hall Collection, Neale Towart archivist
Country Women Artists (Northern Rivers Chapter): Maree Bracker, Jan Davis, Karla Dickens, Jenny Kitchener, Leonie Lane, Shelagh Morgan, Liz Stops – working with Lismore Regional Gallery, Southern Cross University Library Artists’ Books and Visual Arts Graduating Students Catalogues, Collection Lismore Campus
Fiona MacDonald – working with Vivienne Binns’ Full Flight (1981-83), Arts OutWest archive and Charles Sturt University, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery
Raquel Ormella – working with the writings of Joan Kerr, Vanessa Berry, the DAAO (Design and Art Australia Online) UNSW Australia
Lynette Riley – working on the life and work of Pearl Gambanyi Gibbs, Macquarie Regional Library Dubbo, Western Plains Cultural Centre Dubbo, National Centre for Cultural Competence The University of Sydney

Project acknowledgements and expressions of thanks appear on the Future Feminist Archive website (forthcoming)

Future Feminist Archive is presented in association with Contemporary Art and Feminism, an independent research platform with links to Sydney College of the Arts; the School of Literature, Art and Media; and the Power Institute; University of Sydney, Sydney.

Closing Event and Processional – Saturday 7 May

2pm
Future Feminist Archive Report Opening / Closing Events
Guest speakers:
Bec Dean, independent curator and PhD candidate
Heather Goodall, eminent historian whose research interests traverse Indigenous histories and environmental issues
Location: The Cross Art Projects, 8 Llankelly Place, Kings Cross

1-5pm
Name that artist! with Elvis Richardson, artist and author of The Countess Report
Join Elvis Richardson and invited guests and share your feedback and responses to The Countess Report, a benchmarking project and online resource on gender inequality in the Australian contemporary art sector.
Location: Ideas Platform, Artspace, 43–51 Cowper Wharf Road, Woolloomooloo
Hours: 1pm – 5pm, Tuesday 3 – Saturday 7 May 2016

4pm
The History of Performance, a participatory performance with Brown Council
Brown Council, the collaborative practice of Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore, Kelly Doley and Diana Smith, is creating an evolving archive of performance art, Making History. Examining feminist and alternative research methodologies, the work is both a place and a platform with the life and work of feminist performance artist Barbara Cleveland (1945–81) looming large.
Location: In-Between Space, 20th Biennale of Sydney, 86 George Street Redfern
Hours: Daily 10am – 5pm, 18 March – 5 June 2016

Redback Graphix (Alison Alder designer and printer), When they close a pit they kill a community, 1984. Screen print in colour, from four stencils

From University of Wollongong Archive, Mrs Dolly Potter Collection

Mini Graff, Broke, 2016. Acrylic screen print (three stencils), 100 x 70 cm. Source: Radical Wollongong and Jobs for Women, Art Resistance, 2016.

Fiona MacDonald, Arts Caravan, 1982 and 2016. Archival collage and digital print, 2016.
Working with Vivienne Binns, Full Flight, 1982 to 83, Archive ArtsWest, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst.

Lynette Riley, Working with the life and work of Pearl Gambanyi Gibbs, Macquarie Regional Library Dubbo, Western Plains Cultural Centre Dubbo, NSW State Library Archives, National Centre for Cultural Competence The University of Sydney
Cloak for Pearl Gambanyi Gibbs, 2016. Incised poker work on kangaroo skin.

Lynette Riley, poster, 2016

Louise Kate Anderson Working with the life and work of Pearl Gambanyi Gibbs, Lynette Riley, Dubbo Local Aboriginal Lands Council. Life, Lines and Legacy, Pearl Gibbs (Gambanyi) 1901–1988, 2016. Lithographic print.

Raquel Ormella, Working with the writings of Joan Kerr, Vanessa Berry, the DAAO (Design and Art Australia Online) UNSW Australia. The Mysterious Vanessa – CMYK (a page from ‘Artists as Cartoonists, or Extended Black and White’), 2016. Digital print.

Elvis Richardson, Art and Australia (Women), 2014. Collage on linen.

Country Women Artists (Northern Rivers Chapter), Artist book for Future Feminist Archive, 2016.

Country Women Artists (Northern Rivers Chapter): Maree Bracker, Jan Davis, Karla Dickens, Jenny Kitchener, Leonie Lane, Shelagh Morgan, Liz Stops –  working with Lismore Regional Gallery, Southern Cross University Library Artists’ Book Collection

Country Women Artists (Northern Rivers Chapter): Maree Bracker, Jan Davis, Karla Dickens, Jenny Kitchener, Leonie Lane, Shelagh Morgan, Liz Stops –  working with Lismore Regional Gallery, Southern Cross University Library Artists’ Book Collection

Brown Council, The History of Performance, 2015, live participatory performance at The Physics Room Christchurch. Photo: Daegan Wells

Julie Ewington, curator, artwriter and CAF eminence and Catriona Moore, art writer and CAF co-convenor

Artist Louise Kate Anderson, Anny Druett (Pearl Gibb’s granddaughter) and opening speaker Heather Goodall, Historian, Background is Fiona MacDonald’s Full Flight Out West#2.

Additional Participating Artists/Researchers

Brown Council – working with the Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales Library and Archive, the life and work of mythic feminist artist Barbara Cleveland.

Gillian Fuller – working with the DAAO (Design and Art Australia Online) UNSW Australia.

The CoUNTess Report – produced over a year by artist Elvis Richardson, the CoUNTess Report reveals the extent of gender imbalance across the spectrum of the contemporary art world.

The CoUNTess Report is an essential reminder that gender unfairly affects women in the visual arts, as in all other creative areas. The collected data confirms that biases filter the lived experiences of the 75% female visual arts graduates into only 34% of the creators of the art we see in state museums. The CoUNTess shows how masculinised merit judgments infiltrate the judgment of cultural institutions.

The CoUNTess’s Recommendations

Counting gender representation is a fundamental tool of feminist research methodology and in this report the numbers simply serve to highlight who is getting a voice, platform and support in all areas of contemporary visual arts culture in Australia.

1. The CoUNTess Report recommends that stakeholders in the Australian visual art sector routinely collect, analyse and publish gender representation data and use it to inform their policy decisions.

2. The CoUNTess Report recommends that stakeholders in the Australian visual art sector promote and advocate for gender equality in their management activities, operations and programming.

Acknowledgements and thanks

Further project acknowledgements and expressions of thanks appear on the forthcoming Future Feminist Archive website.

Downloads

Jan Davis and Leonie Lane, Intersecting Archives from the Southern Cross University Artist Book Collection, 8 March 2016, exhibition catalogue for FFA, Southern Cross University Library, Lismore. > Download as pdf

Goodall, Heather, “Pearl Gibbs: Some Memories”, Aboriginal History, vol 7, no 1, 1983 > Download as pdf

Future Feminist Archive Residency Report: Lynette Riley, Pearl Gibbs ‘Gambanyi’ Kangaroo Cloak, 2016. > Download as pdf

Future Feminist Archive Residency Report: Fiona MacDonald’s  Full Flight Archive Project, Catriona Moore and Fiona MacDonald in conversation > Download as pdf

Future Feminist Archive Residency Report: Brown Council at the Art Gallery of New South Wales by Jacqueline Millner > Download as pdf

Tracey Callinan, Notes for Feminist Archive about Arts OutWest (AOW), 2015. > Download as pdf

Margaret Smith, Notes for Feminist Archive about Arts OutWest foundation, 2015 > Download as pdf

Liz Stops, Les Tricoteuses: The plain and purl of solidarity and protest [On the Knitting Nannas], 2015 > Download as pdf

Future Feminist Archive Report: Jan Davis and Leonie Lane Working with Southern Cross University Library Artists’ Book Collection, Lismore Campus  > Download as pdf

Links

Brown Council, ‘The History of Performance’, 20th Biennale of Sydney: https://vimeo.com/160501497

Goodall, Heather, “Gibbs, Pearl Mary (Gambanyi) (1901–1983)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography. Retrieved 31 October 2014. At http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gibbs-pearl-mary-gambanyi-12533 

The CoUNTess Report at http://thecountessreport.com.au

Elvis Richardson (The CoUNTess) Name that artist: http://www.artspace.org.au/program/ideas-platform/2016/elvis-richardson-name-that-artist/

SBS TV, 2015, Inspiring Black Women who have changed Australia at http://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/nitv-news/article/2015/03/06/20-inspiring-black-women-who-have-changed-australia

Unfinished Business Exhibition Catalogue > Now available to purchase online

Future Feminist Archive Report is presented in association with Contemporary Art and Feminism, an independent research platform with links to Sydney College of the Arts; the School of Letters, Arts and Media; and the Power Institute; University of Sydney, Sydney.

Country Women Artists (Northern Rivers Chapter) have been assisted by Southern Cross University Library, Lismore.

Fiona MacDonald has been assisted by Arts OutWest Archive, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst.

Future Feminist Archive Report is presented in association with Contemporary Art and Feminism, an independent research platform at Sydney College of the Arts; the School of Letters, Arts and Media; and the Power Institute; University of Sydney, Sydney.