Artist Judy Chicago at the New York Feminist Art Institution

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Feminist art institution

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Political feminism: Activist art in Australia in 2015

Brisbane-based artist and Founding Co-Director of LEVEL artist run initiative Courtney Coombs discusses feminist activist art practice in Australia. Recent discussions both in the art world and beyond have increased the profile and demystified the notion of feminism in the twenty-first century, and the term has once again become integrated into mainstream discussion internationally and in Australia. Now that pop music star Taylor Swift has declared herself a feminist, you could be persuaded that the 'f' word has finally become socially acceptable. However, while many artists have adopted the feminist label across the country, it often feels like feminism has become a lifestyle choice rather than a political one. When the badge is so readily worn by many, society can be fooled into thinking that there is no more work to be done. With the 'f' word once again acceptable while the 'p' word (patriarchy) remains so pass , how are artists responding to the changed conditions but continued imposition of what bell hooks has described as the 'imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy'?

Feminist poetics : symbolism in an emblematic journey reflecting self and vision

My thesis tilled Feminist Poetics: Symbolism in an Emblematic Journey Reflecting Self and Vision, consists of thirty oil paintings on canvas, several preparatory sketches and drawings in different media on paper, and is supported and elucidated by an exegesis. The paintings on unframed canvases reveal mise en scčnes and emblems that present to the viewer a drama about links between identities, differences, relationships and vision. Images of my daughter, friends and myself fill single canvases, suites of paintings, diptyches and triptychs. The impetus behind my research derives from my recognition of the cultural means by which women's experience is excluded from a representational norm or ideal. I use time-honoured devices, such as, illusionist imagery, aspects of portraiture, complex fractured atmospheric space, paintings and drawings within paintings, mirrors and reflective surfaces, shadows and architectural devices. They structure my compositions in a way that envelops the viewer in my internal world of ideas. Some of these features function symbolically, as emblems. A small part of the imagery relies on verisimilitude, such as my hands and their shadow and my single observing eye enclosed by my glasses. What remains is a fantasy world, ‘seen’ by the image of my other eye, or ‘faction’, based on memories and texts explaining the significance of ancient Minoan symbols. In my paintings, I base the subjects of this fantasy on my memories of the Knossos Labyrinth and matristic symbols, such as the pillar, snake, blood, eye and horn. They suggest the presence of a ritual where initiates descended into the adyton (holy of holies) or sunken areas in the labyrinth. The paintings attempt a ‘rewriting’ of sacrality and gender by adopting the symbolism of death, transformation and resurrection in the adyton. The significance of my emblematic imagery is that it constructs a foundation narrative about vision and insight. I sought symbolic attributes shared by European oil painting and Minoan antiquity. Both traditions share symbolic attributes with male dying gods in Greek myths and Medusa plays a central part in this linkage. I argue that her attributes seem identical to both those of the dying gods and Minoan goddesses. In the Minoan context these symbols suggest metaphors for the female body and the mother and daughter blood line. When the symbols align with the beheaded Medusa in a patriarchal context, both her image and her attributes represent cautionary tales about female sexuality that have repercussions for aspects of vision. In Renaissance and Baroque oil painting Medusa's image served as a vehicle for an allegory that personified the triumph of reason over the senses. In the twentieth century, the vagina dentata suggests her image, a personified image of irrational emotion that some male Surrealists celebrated as a muse. She is implicated in the male gaze as a site of castration and her representation suggests a symbolic form pertaining to perspective. Medusa's image, its negative sexual and violent connotations, seemed like a keystone linking iconographic codes in European oil painting to Minoan antiquity. I fused aspects of matristic Minoan antiquity with elements of European oil paintings in the form of disguised attribute gestures, objects and architectural environments. I selected three paintings, Dürer's Setf-Portrait, 1500, Gentileschi's Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, 1630 and Velazquez's Las Meniruis, 1656 as models because 1 detected echoes of Minoan symbolism in the attributes of their subjects and backgrounds. My revision of Medusa's image by connecting it to Minoan antiquity established a feminist means of representation in the largely male-dominated tradition of oil painting. These paintings also suggested painting techniques that were useful to me. Through my representations of my emblematic journey I questioned the narrow focus placed on phallic symbols when I explored how their meanings may have been formed within a matricentric culture. I retained the key symbols of the patriarchal foundation narratives about vision but removed images of violence and their link to desire and replaced it with a ritual form of symbolic death. I challenged the binary oppositional defined Self as opposed to Other by constructing a complex, fluid Self that interacts with others. A multi-directional gaze between subjects, viewers and artist replaces the male gaze. Different qualities of paint, coagulation and random flow form a blood symbolism. Many layers of paint retaining some aspects of the Gaze and Glance, fuse and separate intermittently to construct and define form. The sense of motion and fluidity constructs a form of multi-faceted selves. The supporting document, the exegesis is in two parts. In the first part, I discuss the Minoan sources of my iconography and the symbolic gender specific meanings suggested by particular symbols and their changed meanings in European oil painting, I explain how I integrate Minoan symbols into European oil paintings as a form of disguised symbolism. In the second part I explain how my alternative use of symbolism and paint alludes to a feminist poetic.

The silent witness: art as a mode of representation of voices and visions of how,as a woman, I build borders and bridges in enacting my identit(ies)

Feminist theorists unveil how women negotiate their identities within complex entanglements of social constructs such as race, ethnicity, religious belief and practices, cultural tradition, and values. Feminist artists use subjective experiences that shape representation and performativity in empowering women to have a ‘voice’. In this paper, I focus on ‘breaking silences’ through series of my artworks (as part of my PhD research) that represent self-narratives as subjectivities of life experiences, contingencies, and cultural shifts through migration transitions as new ways of figuration and reflection on such issues. I look through discourses of gender differences, nomadic subjectivity, and new ways of figurations (Braidotti 2011, 10) and the affect theory (Gregg and Seigworth 2010), and the concept of giving ‘voice’ (Berlant 2011). Such discourses frame how I interrogate and represent my gendered identities.

Gender, sexuality and the challenge of seeing in Orlando

Orlando (Sally Potter, 1992) is a significant filmic achievement: in only ninety minutes it offers a rich, layered, and challenging account of a life lived across four hundred years, across two sexes and genders, and across multiple countries and cultures. Already established as a feminist artist, Potter aligns herself with a genealogy of feminist art by adapting Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography (1928) to tell the story of Orlando: a British subject who must negotiate their “identity” while living a strangely long time and, also somewhat strangely, changing biological sex from male to female. Both novel and film interrogate norms of gender and culture. They each take up issues of sex, gender, and sexuality as socially-constructed phenomena rather than as “essential truths”, and Orlando’s attempts to tell his/her story and make sense of his/her life mirror readers’ attempts to understand and interpret Orlando’s journey within inherited artistic traditions.

We need to talk (Performance Space)

'We need to talk (Performace Space)' is a 3 channel audio work with round table and custom cushions, examining the discursive framework of LEVEL as a feminist art collective. It was included in the exhibition 'Sexes', curated by Bec Dean, Jeff Khan and Deborah Kelly, at Performance Space. The audio works feature recontextualised excerpts from a series of dinner party conversations, which focused on the role of women and feminism in the 21st century. Placed in a specially constructed ‘lazy susan’, this audio installation speaks of the experience of sharing information, ideas and experiences ‘around the table’. The fabric patterns on the floor cushions have been designed from banners created in collective workshops with women in Brisbane and Melbourne, Australia, as a way of translating personal statements and political ideas into the everyday.

Inner voices

Video works,paintings and photographic collages installed as part of an international group exhibition in Japan. The exhibition dealt with how women born after 1960 negotiated ideas of globalisation, feminism and identity and was accompanied by an exhibition catalogue.

Aggregate Icons/Combat Drag

A series of large-scale photographic collages and videoworks installed in the 2010 The Beauty Of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, Sydney Biennale Cockatoo Island, Sydney (cat.)The work addresses her ongoing interest in feminist strategies for negotiating individual and collective identities, equality,and social activism.

The declaration of resemblance and fluid insurgents

A large scale installation over three gallery spaces that addresses Wymans ongoing in exploring feminist strategies for negotiating individual and collective identities, equality, and social activism.

Effacing power

A solo exhibiton of painting, photography, collage and fabric sculpture works that continues Wyman's interest in exploring feminist strategies for negotiating individual and collective identities,equallity and social activism. She explores the idea that the clothed body is often the first point of protest and demonstrates how masks and disguises provide collective power and protection in conflict zones.

Combat drag

A single channel video work that explores the idea that the clothed body is often the first point of protest and demonstrates how masks and disguses provide collective power and protection in conflict zones. With catalogue.

Free pussy riot crazy quilt

Digital photographs sewn onto secondhand tie-dye t-shirts. The work continues Wyman's interest in exploring feminist strategies for negotiating individual and collective identiities, equality and social activism.

Permissionary work

The Los Angeles-based collaborative duo responds to the community-focused mission of the Center for the Arts Eagle Rock by asking themselves what kinds of invitations they want to extend to others publicly and privately. The resulting works depict various attempts at engagement and include examples that are insider, narcissistic, exclusive, inclusive, and imaginary. This new body of work furthers CamLab’s ongoing investigation into intimacy and how the political becomes personal by making its existing networks palpable and by giving its potential networks form.