In the previous post, I discussed the gender (in)equality in Hobart art galleries. In this post, I want to draw attention to the quite incredible differences in gender representation at this year’s Biennale. I counted just 38 female artists to the 116 male artists in the Artist Index of the 2008 Biennale of Sydney guide. In fact, as Bec Dean points out in her Column 2 article, 22 per cent of the artists are also dead male artists – a similar number to the number of women, dead or alive.
The director of this year’s Biennale – Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev addresses the issue of gender quotas in her catalogue essay, but argues that it isn’t relevant anymore:
“I have no quota for gender participation; however, being one of the last of the generation of people who emerged when feminism was crossing structuralism and psychoanalysis to produce the body of thought around post-feminism, I am naturally interested in these sorts of questions. I believe that these days, sometimes male artists are post-feminists in their practice… and sometimes female artists are extremely patriarchal in the authoritative way in which they might create a frontal, detached object of contemplation, which is not a feminist endeavour. So I would say that we have gone beyond gender quotas and it more about whether the work is post-feminist or not.”
Christov-Bakargiev, pp.31 2008 Biennale of Sydney Catalogue
I’d like to think we’re beyond gender quotas too, but when there are such discrepancies in the number of female versus male artists, it highlights the fact that perhaps they are necessary. I can’t even begin to imagine the furore that would’ve erupted had a male director curated such as small percentage of women into the biennale – does the fact that a woman has chosen the artists have an effect on the (seemingly) quite acceptance of such inequality? I certainly haven’t read anything other than a paragraph of Bec Dean’s article on the subject.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Gender representation in Hobart galleries Winter 08
I have tallied up the number of female and male artists shown at a number of high-profile contemporary art galleries this winter to examine the gender imbalance in exhibiting contemporary artists. I have used the Hobart Winter Gallery Guide for this project, so there may be a few mistakes. Unsurprisingly, there are many more male artists than female overall, and it also appears that you are more likely to get a solo show if you are male. Apparently, there are more female Higher Research Degree Graduates at the Tasmanian School of Art than male graduates, so there is no shortage of practicing female artists. So, what are the excuses?
The galleries included in the tally are: Carnegie, Plimsoll, Criterion, Inflight, and Bett Gallery
I have excluded CAST for now as their listing in the Winter Guide doesn’t list individual artists and their website is down. I have also excluded 6a for similar reasons. The TMAG is a bit hard to calculate, but off the top of my head I think that the last two solo exhibitions there – Leigh Hobba and Ricky Maynard- were both male artists. The Salamanca Arts Centre is a bit hard to list because of its extremely varied program and often short shows. The gallery that triggered this count – Despard – is also excluded because they don’t list individual artists in the Gallery guide. I’m hoping to start including these other galleries in the future but I thought I’d just get these numbers up first.
(Note: collaborative artists are listed as individuals. That is, a work made by two female artists, both artists will be counted as individuals.)
Okey dokey here are the numbers:
Carnegie:
Female 4
Male 0
(Two females had solo shows)
Plimsoll:
Female 4
Male 9
(Excluding 1+2 Architecture)
Criterion
Female 1
Male 4
(Two males had solo shows)
Inflight
Female 4
Male 3
(Two male and one female had solo shows)
Bett Gallery
Female 1
Male 6
(Two males and one female had solo shows)
Total:
Female 14
Male 22
Total Solo:
Female 4
Male 6 (8 if you count TMAG)
Carnegie had a definite gender balance, but it bucked the trend by being dominated by Female artists.
Plimsoll, despite all of the University’s equality statements, has more than twice the number of exhibiting male artists to female artists.
Criterion and Bett, our two commercial galleries have a definite swing towards the penis. Significant?
Inflight is perhaps the most balanced. I suspect that being an ARI, Inflight gets a lot of artists directly applying for shows, as opposed to being curated or selected for shows. What does this tell you about curatorial practices in Hobart? Should I be recording the gender of curators too perhaps?
As for TMAG… now that there is a female curator of art (well there will be in a couple of months), we might see a couple of female artists being granted solo exhibitions.
Once the CAST website is back up and I get info from 6a, I'll post some updated results. I'm looking forward to seeing what Spring shows us too...
The galleries included in the tally are: Carnegie, Plimsoll, Criterion, Inflight, and Bett Gallery
I have excluded CAST for now as their listing in the Winter Guide doesn’t list individual artists and their website is down. I have also excluded 6a for similar reasons. The TMAG is a bit hard to calculate, but off the top of my head I think that the last two solo exhibitions there – Leigh Hobba and Ricky Maynard- were both male artists. The Salamanca Arts Centre is a bit hard to list because of its extremely varied program and often short shows. The gallery that triggered this count – Despard – is also excluded because they don’t list individual artists in the Gallery guide. I’m hoping to start including these other galleries in the future but I thought I’d just get these numbers up first.
(Note: collaborative artists are listed as individuals. That is, a work made by two female artists, both artists will be counted as individuals.)
Okey dokey here are the numbers:
Carnegie:
Female 4
Male 0
(Two females had solo shows)
Plimsoll:
Female 4
Male 9
(Excluding 1+2 Architecture)
Criterion
Female 1
Male 4
(Two males had solo shows)
Inflight
Female 4
Male 3
(Two male and one female had solo shows)
Bett Gallery
Female 1
Male 6
(Two males and one female had solo shows)
Total:
Female 14
Male 22
Total Solo:
Female 4
Male 6 (8 if you count TMAG)
Carnegie had a definite gender balance, but it bucked the trend by being dominated by Female artists.
Plimsoll, despite all of the University’s equality statements, has more than twice the number of exhibiting male artists to female artists.
Criterion and Bett, our two commercial galleries have a definite swing towards the penis. Significant?
Inflight is perhaps the most balanced. I suspect that being an ARI, Inflight gets a lot of artists directly applying for shows, as opposed to being curated or selected for shows. What does this tell you about curatorial practices in Hobart? Should I be recording the gender of curators too perhaps?
As for TMAG… now that there is a female curator of art (well there will be in a couple of months), we might see a couple of female artists being granted solo exhibitions.
Once the CAST website is back up and I get info from 6a, I'll post some updated results. I'm looking forward to seeing what Spring shows us too...
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
An everything-is-opening-at-once night. aka don't you wish you hadn't made a vow not to drink tonight...
Last Friday was a bit of a bonza opening-wise. I only made it to four, but I think that’s a pretty good effort.
First off was Bill Hart’s PhD submission at the Plimsoll Gallery, which includes some of the best new media art I’ve seen in a long time. Bill uses text to create images that change and evolve. The text is often minute and in many of the works, the resulting image looks like it has been hand drawn with pastels or crayons. The handcrafted aesthetic seems completely oppositional to the way in which these images are created, as Bill uses complex computer programming to make his art. Many of the televisions are positioned behind white-painted frames, so that only the screen is visible to the viewer. This seems an interesting and deliberate decision, an attempt to avoid the connotations of the LCD screen, which are all too commonplace in galleries today. The frames additionally complement the ‘drawn’ effect of the images, and while the frames might have seemed a tad clichéd and over the top if they had surrounded a regular drawing, the very physicality of the painted wood somehow seems to enhance the glowing images contained within.
I find Bill’s work hypnotic. Words weave their way across multiple screens and for some reason I am reminded of the sperm scene in Look Who’s Talking. Others consist of words coming together to form vaguely familiar forms, one of which looks like the artist’s own head. Near by, ancient-looking script morphs into various hand tools – spanners, nails and hammers; and an adjacent screen, instead of using letters to create images, uses pale crescent-shaped forms, which look suspiciously like toe nail clippings. Etch.
It’s a shame that Bill’s submission is only open to the public over the weekend, and I hope that he has another opportunity to exhibit this body of work so that more people can see it.
The next opening on my trail is at Despard Gallery. The ‘Winter Show’ I think it’s called. It includes a number of emerging artists that Despard is considering representing. The reason why I don’t really want to dwell on this exhibition was that it only includes one female artist out of (if I recall correctly) six participants. I know that the art world is still predominantly a ‘boy’s club’ even though it’s a bit uncool to broach the subject, however when you visit ‘up and coming’ exhibitions such as this, where there is a blatant disproportion of men to women, it’s a reminder that equal opportunity does not exist in the visual arts. I’m considering starting a gallery watch – tallying up the number of women and men artists by some of the more high-profile Hobart galleries.
Trudging up Elizabeth Street to Bett gallery now... I can’t remember the name of the artist, and barely remember the photographs on exhibition, as they are quite frankly that unremarkable. So I’ll move onto the next gallery: the ARI 6a.
Amy Spiers’ Cubby consists of massive number of boxes and sheets stacked and arranged to create an adult sized cubby. 6a’s unconventional shape is an asset to works such as this. The entire gallery space has been turned into a cardboard environment with narrow hallways and low ceilings formed out of draped sheets. I feel myself regressing and have a strange compulsion to curl up in a foetal position in a secluded corner.
There are no children there when I visit (which is pretty late in the evening) and I suspect that they’d be a bit disappointed by this watered down version of an exciting concept. There just aren’t enough tunnels, nooks and crannies, narrow pathways and opportunities to get lost. It’s truly an adult cubby.
Outside 6a, the usual bbq and beer is served, but instead of setting up the barbie alongside the ancient but beautiful abandoned shed, it’s set up on the flat ground on which the building used to stand. Unfortunately, instead of trying to save it, the authorities apparently decided to knock the structure down. Nevertheless, the 6a crew have made good use of the new space, setting up a projector on the side of the gallery for a Singstar competition. It’s amusing to see something so daggy as a karaoke sing-off at Hobart’s (value judgement warning) ‘coolest’ gallery.
First off was Bill Hart’s PhD submission at the Plimsoll Gallery, which includes some of the best new media art I’ve seen in a long time. Bill uses text to create images that change and evolve. The text is often minute and in many of the works, the resulting image looks like it has been hand drawn with pastels or crayons. The handcrafted aesthetic seems completely oppositional to the way in which these images are created, as Bill uses complex computer programming to make his art. Many of the televisions are positioned behind white-painted frames, so that only the screen is visible to the viewer. This seems an interesting and deliberate decision, an attempt to avoid the connotations of the LCD screen, which are all too commonplace in galleries today. The frames additionally complement the ‘drawn’ effect of the images, and while the frames might have seemed a tad clichéd and over the top if they had surrounded a regular drawing, the very physicality of the painted wood somehow seems to enhance the glowing images contained within.
I find Bill’s work hypnotic. Words weave their way across multiple screens and for some reason I am reminded of the sperm scene in Look Who’s Talking. Others consist of words coming together to form vaguely familiar forms, one of which looks like the artist’s own head. Near by, ancient-looking script morphs into various hand tools – spanners, nails and hammers; and an adjacent screen, instead of using letters to create images, uses pale crescent-shaped forms, which look suspiciously like toe nail clippings. Etch.
It’s a shame that Bill’s submission is only open to the public over the weekend, and I hope that he has another opportunity to exhibit this body of work so that more people can see it.
The next opening on my trail is at Despard Gallery. The ‘Winter Show’ I think it’s called. It includes a number of emerging artists that Despard is considering representing. The reason why I don’t really want to dwell on this exhibition was that it only includes one female artist out of (if I recall correctly) six participants. I know that the art world is still predominantly a ‘boy’s club’ even though it’s a bit uncool to broach the subject, however when you visit ‘up and coming’ exhibitions such as this, where there is a blatant disproportion of men to women, it’s a reminder that equal opportunity does not exist in the visual arts. I’m considering starting a gallery watch – tallying up the number of women and men artists by some of the more high-profile Hobart galleries.
Trudging up Elizabeth Street to Bett gallery now... I can’t remember the name of the artist, and barely remember the photographs on exhibition, as they are quite frankly that unremarkable. So I’ll move onto the next gallery: the ARI 6a.
Amy Spiers’ Cubby consists of massive number of boxes and sheets stacked and arranged to create an adult sized cubby. 6a’s unconventional shape is an asset to works such as this. The entire gallery space has been turned into a cardboard environment with narrow hallways and low ceilings formed out of draped sheets. I feel myself regressing and have a strange compulsion to curl up in a foetal position in a secluded corner.
There are no children there when I visit (which is pretty late in the evening) and I suspect that they’d be a bit disappointed by this watered down version of an exciting concept. There just aren’t enough tunnels, nooks and crannies, narrow pathways and opportunities to get lost. It’s truly an adult cubby.
Outside 6a, the usual bbq and beer is served, but instead of setting up the barbie alongside the ancient but beautiful abandoned shed, it’s set up on the flat ground on which the building used to stand. Unfortunately, instead of trying to save it, the authorities apparently decided to knock the structure down. Nevertheless, the 6a crew have made good use of the new space, setting up a projector on the side of the gallery for a Singstar competition. It’s amusing to see something so daggy as a karaoke sing-off at Hobart’s (value judgement warning) ‘coolest’ gallery.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
June exhibitons in Hobart: 6a, Inflight, CAST
It seems appropriate that this blog is born in a great month of art in Hobart.
At 6a Gallery, Trudi Brinkman's show On the Other Side of the Mountain is a strangely amusing combination of video, installation and self-contained sculptural works.
The mountainous wood and plastic construction positioned in the entrance to the gallery, features in the video piece, which shows the artist taking it for a ‘walk’ around the streets surrounding the gallery. The usually busy North Hobart restaurant strip is eerily dark and devoid of cars, which is convenient as the plastic mound is nearly the width of the traffic lane. The image of the artist solemnly leading around the large, but evidently fragile, structure has a ridiculousness that cannot be ignored, and I found myself chuckling as I watched the projected image.
Other works included a heavy-looking plaster mountain hung from the ceiling by large leather straps. In the crater-like hole at the top of the mountain, a tiny wooden chair is nestled, and like the video work, I found this work quaintly humorous. Nearby, another work uses a tiny chair, which is both incorporated into and suspended from the end of a bended wooden stick. The work is easy to miss as it’s above normal head height, however the stick is brutally attached to the wall with a couple of pieces of gaffer tape, which I suspect have been carefully placed. Trudi’s love of hands-on making is obvious in this show, and despite the fact that most of the works vary dramatically in medium and aesthetic, On the Other Side of the Mountain is a beautifully unified show.
The other Hobart ARI, Inflight, has two exhibitions on at the moment. One is a joint exhibition called Out of Home by photographers Shea Bresnehan and Nicole Robson, and the other is Revue des Deux Mondes by sculptor Lucy Bleach. Shea and Nicole both completed honours in Photography last year at RMIT and the Tasmanian School of Art, respectively, and their work is united by the domestic, although in very different ways. Shea’s work includes morbid scenes of abandoned furniture and shadowed houses, creating dark moods through her manipulation of light. Nicole’s lightboxes on the other hand, show multiple images of the same small bedroom, although in each image the bedroom has been altered in its decoration. It seems incomprehendable that someone would go to the trouble of changing the decor of a room, from the wallpaper and curtains to the bedspread and ornaments, just for a single photo; yet with the exception of the bed and side-table, this is exactly what Nicole has done. As a result, each room has a different personality, and you could almost imagine the person who might have chosen that ghastly blue and white striped wallpaper with matching curtains, or the kitsch horse print above the bed, the frilled lampshade or the psychedelically patterned bedspread. At the same time however, the images seem highly constructed – Nicole’s taste veers towards the kitsch, and with some of the rooms it is hard to image that anyone could have such bad taste. I suspect that it is the embrace of the kitsch, the artificiality and incredible amount of labour invested in creating these images that actually attracts me to Nicole’s photographs.
As adjoining exhibitions, Out of Home and Revue des Deux Mondes work well together. The freestanding wall that Lucy has built in the centre of the gallery is approached from the edge, so that the viewer has to choose which side to examine first. I choose to walk around to the left, and am confronted with layers of hard packed clay in various earthy colours. The other side is made up of lightboxes which show shelves of old journals, one of which is called Revue des Deux Mondes. The scale of the texts, and the nature of the lightbox made the books look too real, similar to the uncanny feeling I got looking at Nicole and Shea’s work.
The other show I want to quickly note is Companion Planting, which just finished at CAST. Curated by Jack Robins, it features the work of Dean Chatwin, Amanda Shone, Lucy Bleach (again), Raef Sawford and Michelle Cangiano. I’m getting a bit sleepy so I’ll just mention Dean’s work, which stands out from the rest. On massive slab of concrete in the centre of the gallery, a hose and a battered-looking bubbler sits spilling out water, which flows away off the slightly tilted slab seemingly to nowhere. The topical work comes at a time of increasing water shortages and restrictions in Australia, and reminds me of my childhood when many people regularly hosed their concrete driveways to get rid of fallen leaves, seemingly oblivious to the fact that concrete doesn’t grow – no matter how much you water it!
Phew! In the future, I probably won’t be commenting on three exhibitions at once, as I think short and sweet is probably adequate. It was only because of all these great exhibitions being on at once, that made me want to write about Hobart art and thus inspired this blog. Hopefully local art will continue to be as inspiring.
Oh and I’m sorry if I have grammatical or spelling errors, in the interests of more, quick posts, you might have to put up with a few typos! Cheers, E
http://www.myspace.com/six_a
http://www.inflightart.com.au/
http://www.castgallery.org/
At 6a Gallery, Trudi Brinkman's show On the Other Side of the Mountain is a strangely amusing combination of video, installation and self-contained sculptural works.
The mountainous wood and plastic construction positioned in the entrance to the gallery, features in the video piece, which shows the artist taking it for a ‘walk’ around the streets surrounding the gallery. The usually busy North Hobart restaurant strip is eerily dark and devoid of cars, which is convenient as the plastic mound is nearly the width of the traffic lane. The image of the artist solemnly leading around the large, but evidently fragile, structure has a ridiculousness that cannot be ignored, and I found myself chuckling as I watched the projected image.
Other works included a heavy-looking plaster mountain hung from the ceiling by large leather straps. In the crater-like hole at the top of the mountain, a tiny wooden chair is nestled, and like the video work, I found this work quaintly humorous. Nearby, another work uses a tiny chair, which is both incorporated into and suspended from the end of a bended wooden stick. The work is easy to miss as it’s above normal head height, however the stick is brutally attached to the wall with a couple of pieces of gaffer tape, which I suspect have been carefully placed. Trudi’s love of hands-on making is obvious in this show, and despite the fact that most of the works vary dramatically in medium and aesthetic, On the Other Side of the Mountain is a beautifully unified show.
The other Hobart ARI, Inflight, has two exhibitions on at the moment. One is a joint exhibition called Out of Home by photographers Shea Bresnehan and Nicole Robson, and the other is Revue des Deux Mondes by sculptor Lucy Bleach. Shea and Nicole both completed honours in Photography last year at RMIT and the Tasmanian School of Art, respectively, and their work is united by the domestic, although in very different ways. Shea’s work includes morbid scenes of abandoned furniture and shadowed houses, creating dark moods through her manipulation of light. Nicole’s lightboxes on the other hand, show multiple images of the same small bedroom, although in each image the bedroom has been altered in its decoration. It seems incomprehendable that someone would go to the trouble of changing the decor of a room, from the wallpaper and curtains to the bedspread and ornaments, just for a single photo; yet with the exception of the bed and side-table, this is exactly what Nicole has done. As a result, each room has a different personality, and you could almost imagine the person who might have chosen that ghastly blue and white striped wallpaper with matching curtains, or the kitsch horse print above the bed, the frilled lampshade or the psychedelically patterned bedspread. At the same time however, the images seem highly constructed – Nicole’s taste veers towards the kitsch, and with some of the rooms it is hard to image that anyone could have such bad taste. I suspect that it is the embrace of the kitsch, the artificiality and incredible amount of labour invested in creating these images that actually attracts me to Nicole’s photographs.
As adjoining exhibitions, Out of Home and Revue des Deux Mondes work well together. The freestanding wall that Lucy has built in the centre of the gallery is approached from the edge, so that the viewer has to choose which side to examine first. I choose to walk around to the left, and am confronted with layers of hard packed clay in various earthy colours. The other side is made up of lightboxes which show shelves of old journals, one of which is called Revue des Deux Mondes. The scale of the texts, and the nature of the lightbox made the books look too real, similar to the uncanny feeling I got looking at Nicole and Shea’s work.
The other show I want to quickly note is Companion Planting, which just finished at CAST. Curated by Jack Robins, it features the work of Dean Chatwin, Amanda Shone, Lucy Bleach (again), Raef Sawford and Michelle Cangiano. I’m getting a bit sleepy so I’ll just mention Dean’s work, which stands out from the rest. On massive slab of concrete in the centre of the gallery, a hose and a battered-looking bubbler sits spilling out water, which flows away off the slightly tilted slab seemingly to nowhere. The topical work comes at a time of increasing water shortages and restrictions in Australia, and reminds me of my childhood when many people regularly hosed their concrete driveways to get rid of fallen leaves, seemingly oblivious to the fact that concrete doesn’t grow – no matter how much you water it!
Phew! In the future, I probably won’t be commenting on three exhibitions at once, as I think short and sweet is probably adequate. It was only because of all these great exhibitions being on at once, that made me want to write about Hobart art and thus inspired this blog. Hopefully local art will continue to be as inspiring.
Oh and I’m sorry if I have grammatical or spelling errors, in the interests of more, quick posts, you might have to put up with a few typos! Cheers, E
http://www.myspace.com/six_a
http://www.inflightart.com.au/
http://www.castgallery.org/
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