Log Cabin, 2019, Christine Dean
Political Women brings together artists from diverse cultural, generational, personal and artistic perspectives to illustrate and celebrate the complexity of contemporary feminist discourse and the art made within it. Each artist’s practice is entangled with politics, personal narrative and activism to highlight the impacts and consequences of colonisation and patriarchal power.
The exhibition draws attention to the overlaps and divergences in the lives of the artists, while also placing regional and urban women standing side by side, working towards reconciliation, accepting differences and creating a more just world through empathy and tolerance.
Artists
Amani Haydar
Amani Haydar is an award-winning artist, writer and advocate for women’s health and safety, based in Western Sydney. Amani’s self-portrait titled Insert Headline Here was a finalist in the 2018 Archibald Prize. Since then, her writing and illustrations have been published in Racism, Arab Australian Other, Sweatshop Women Volume Two, SBS Voices and ABC News Online. Amani has had solo exhibitions with Bankstown Arts Centre, Fairfield City Museum and Gallery, and MARS Gallery, Melbourne. In 2020 Amani was a Finalist for the NSW Premier’s Woman of the Year Award and was named Local Woman of the Year for Bankstown in recognition of her advocacy against domestic violence. Her book The Mother Wound, a feminist memoir about violence against women, is out now.
Dr Christine Dean
Dr. Christine Dean commenced exhibiting as an artist in 1988. Her studies include a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Art History, 1986; followed by a Diploma of Art Education, 1988; a Graduate Diploma in Painting, 1991; a Masters of Fine Arts, 2000 and a PhD, 2010. Christine’s exhibition history includes, Spirit + Place, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Juice, Art Gallery of NSW, 1997; Points of Departure, Tobey Fine Arts, New York, 2007; Minus Space at PS1, New York, 2009; Fabrik, Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne, 2016 and The Public Body 2.0, Artspace, Sydney, 2017.
Debra Keenahan
Debra Keenahan is a visual artist, psychologist, and academic. Having achondroplasia dwarfism, she brings personal insight to understanding the dynamics of interactions and social structures that include/exclude the visibly different from equitable social relations. Debra’s work reflects the philosophy that the personal is the political. In her art practice Debra uses 2D, 3D, Virtual Reality, Film and Performance methods to represent disability aesthetics. Debra has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions and has sole and co-authored a book, chapters, and articles. Debra lectures at Western Sydney University and previously worked as a psychologist. For Debra, psychology and the visual arts complement each other.
Gail Manderson
Gail Manderson is a Wiradjuri Elder and Master Weaver, living in Wagga Wagga. She has been teaching Wiradjuri Culture through song, language, games, stories, weaving and cooking in schools for over 30 years. Gail has completed her Graduate Certificate in Wiradjuri Heritage, Culture and Language and uses this to pass on Language to the younger generations. Gail creates woven baskets, mats, dillybags, jewellery, string bags, Aboriginal dolls, animals, nets and scoops. She currently has work in the Australian Museum exhibition Unsettled and has sold baskets to Wominjeka, Museum of Victoria, and private collectors in Seattle, New York and Milan.
Her Riot
Her Riot is considering how you be a musician within the visual arts by creating songs, videos and installations that range from sincere and contemplative to irreverent punk pop. Inspired by DIY aesthetics, the Narrandera tip and writers such as Silvia Federici, Her Riot is respectfully raging against the music industry, complicated histories and our troubled Western past.
Kath Withers
Kath Withers, known to many as Aunty Kath, is a Wiradjuri Elder. An accomplished artist, Kath often creates through painting, printmaking and weaving to tell the stories of her life and dreaming. She has work held in numerous collections nationally and internationally including Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre Museum of Victoria and the Australian Museum. A deep care for community is evident in everything Kath does.
Lorraine Tye
Lorraine Tye is a Wiradjuri Elder and artist with disability who has artworks in major Australian collections and sits on various boards and advisory groups. Her artworks speak of Wiradjuri women’s stories, incorporating installation, video or intricate weavings across a variety of scales, from miniature to large and immersive. Lorraine’s artworks act as a cultural bridge between divided and contested histories by allowing an entry point into important and ancient understandings of place.
Ms Saffaa
Ms Saffaa is a Sydney-based street artist, researcher, and a cultural activist. She moved to Sydney in 2008 after quitting her eight-year lucrative advertising career to pursue a career in the visual arts. Her creative practice engages with culturally-specific notions of gender politics. She employs her own experiences, personal reflections, and artistic expressions as a form of cultural activism in order to enrich the understanding of the plight of Saudi women in Australia and beyond.
Sarah Mifsud
Sarah Mifsud is an interdisciplinary creative practitioner and academic, working predominantly within the field of photography, digital imaging and design. Sarah’s work predominantly focuses on Feminist perspectives relating to identity and otherness and more recently has been investigating photographic practice and the ways in which it facilitates conversations with our past to create a retrospective reality. The differences that exist between the established Western conventions of representation of the human figure and how these differences are communicated symbolically within art has been a concept explored and represented visually within Sarah’s work for over ten years.
Disobedient Aprons Workshop
Griffith Regional Art Gallery
Wednesday 24 July 2021
Join artist Julie Montgarrett to applique or embroider a short, sharp statement onto an apron that calls out everyday sexist comments. The artwork made by participants will be become part of the exhibition, alongside aprons created by Julie Montgarrett.
Closing Event and Artist Talk
at Griffith Regional Art Gallery
Griffith Regional Art Gallery
Saturday 12 February 2022
From 11am - 12pm join the artists for a closing event with speeches and light snacks. From 12pm- 2pm join the artists for an extended artist talk and conversation discussing their artwork, political activism and how their lives overlap and diverge based upon their locations and backgrounds.
Waybali mawang marramali mayiny walan:
Weaving together makes people strong
Griffith Regional Art Gallery
Thursday 10 and Friday 11 February 2022
Museum of Art and Culture Lake Macquarie, yapang
Saturday 7 May 2022
Join Wiradjuri artist-weaver Aunty Gail Manderson and textile artist Julie Montgarrett to explore weaving techniques amongst a supportive community. Open to people from all cultural backgrounds.
Women in Abstraction Lecture + Painting and Femmage (Feminist Collage) Workshop
Museum of Art and Culture Lake Macquarie, yapang
Saturday 12 March 2022
Join artist Christine Dean, who teaches painting at the National Art School, to understand the importance of women artists in the Abstract Expressionist movement and beyond. The session will begin with a short historical lecture, followed by a hands-on painting and femmage workshop where you will create your own artwork using collage, mixed media and acrylic paint on canvas or board.
Public Programs
This project is supported by The Cad Factory, Griffith Regional Art Gallery, Museum of Art and Culture Lake Macquarie, yapang, Create NSW, Regional Arts NSW, Western Riverina Arts, and Regional Arts Australia. The Cad Factory is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW. This project was made possible through a Project and Marketing Accelerator Grant provided by Regional Arts NSW through the Regional Arts Fund, an Australian Government initiative supporting the arts in regional, remote and very remote Australia.
