I couldn’t be more excited and honoured to be curated in this Australian first-landmark cross-generational survey exhibition. ‘In the Arms of Unconsciousness: Women, Feminism and the Surreal’ curated by Carrie Kibbler (and assisted by Naomi Stewart, assistant curator) will open late June 2023 at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre. The exhibition, showcasing a stellar line up of 22 significant Australian women artists, aims to look at the links between feminism and surrealism in Australian art.
The exhibition is to be officially launched on Friday 30 June 2023 6pm in the main gallery at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre and will continue until Sunday 3rd September 2023. The exhibition will also be complimented with a jam packed program of interviews, artist talks and other promotional events including a special feature film presenting the artists in show and accompanying digital catalogue with essays written by leading Australian arts writers.
Exhibiting Artists: Del Kathryn Barton, Vivienne Binns, Pat Brassington, Louisa Chircop, Madeleine Kelly, Deborah Kelly, Juz Kitson, Lucy O’Doherty, Caroline Rothwell, Kaylene Whiskey, Jelena Telecki, Lynda Draper, Freya Jobbins, Jenny Orchard, Jill Orr, Patricia Piccinini, Julie Rrap, Honey Long and Prue Stent, Marikit Santiago, Anne Wallace and Amanda Williams.
The exhibition will examine the waves of feminism in Australian which began in the 1970s to the early 1980s, and again in the early 1990s and how they were directly linked to the feminist art and Riot Grrrl movement in which female artists and theorists began to rethink and reclaim how the female body was represented. Artists during this period include Vivienne Binns, Jill Orr, Pat Brassington and Anne Wallace.
More recently, a younger generation of female artists are working with elements of the surreal, the psychoanalytic, the unconscious and the fantastical in their practice, with several specifically citing the influence of the surrealists in their practice. Artists include Del Kathryn Barton, Louisa Chircop, Madeline Kelly, Deborah Kelly, Juz Kitson, Lucy O’Doherty, Caroline Rothwell and Amanda Williams.
The exhibition proposes that there has been an intrinsic link between feminism and the surreal, particularly in Australia, and this current wave is most notable since 2012 in that it aligns with the fourth wave of feminism.
More news to come on this amazing exhibition!
Hazelhurst has received funding from Create NSW and Sutherland Shire Council for this project.
