Gallery 1:
‘Cats Do Not Go to Heaven’
In her essay, “Shakespeare’s Sister”, published in the eminent feminist text, ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1929), Virginia Woolf critiques the words of historian G. M. Trevelyan, who asserted that cats do not go to heaven, and women cannot write the words of Shakespeare. In 2013, Knighted German artist Georg Baselitz infamously stated in an interview, “Women do not paint very well. It’s a fact.”
While many of the barriers to having a creative practice that existed in Woolf’s time have been dismantled through rigorous efforts of 20th-century activists, it would be naïve to suggest we are (regardless of gender) free from the fetters of patriarchy. Almost a century on, Woolf’s text remains an unsettling and uncanny mirror to contemporary conversations surrounding certain gendered experiences.
‘Cats Do Not Go to Heaven’ brings together five artists who make work while experiencing the world as women. The exhibition is curated by Caity Reynolds and features work by Savannah Jarvis, Dana Lawrie, Mary Letain, Ally McKay and Kate McKay, who each make art very well. It’s a fact.
Accompanied by texts by Kat Campbell and Chloe Waters.
Gallery 2:
Linda Clark
‘Bearing Witness: Absence’
In ‘Bearing Witness: Absence’ 2019, Linda Clark explores the relationship between mother and daughter. An immersive installation, the work blends and obscures images of the artist and her daughter, and draws attention to ideas such as play, ritual and the potential for autonomy within family dynamics. ‘Bearing Witness: Absence’ extends Clark’s investigations in the the complex interrelationship between the roles of mother and artist as a potential strategy to address the issue of maternal periphery.
Dr Linda Clark is an emerging installation artist exhibiting nationally and internationally. Her work has been included in key exhibitions such as Dark Rituals: Magical Relics from the Little Art Spellbook at the University of Sunshine Coast and UTAS, and Antipods: Magical Creatures with Backward Feet at University of Saskatchewan, Canada. She has recently engaged in curatorial projects such as Tethered: Embodying the Mother-Artist Model at USQ Artsworx. In 2015, Clark won the Queensland Regional Art Awards Gray Puksand Digital Award. Clark has recently completed her Doctor of Creative Arts with a practice led research project at the University of Southern Queensland. Her research project investigated whether a practice-led research methodology titled ‘The Mother-Artist Model’ can be used within a collaborative network of mother-artists to facilitate practice, engagement and exchange, to overcome regionalism.
Accompanying text by Louise Martin-Chew.
Opening Event: 13 September 2019
Gallery hours: 10-2 Thursday-Sunday
Image Credit: Savannah Jarvis ‘Dedicated Working Hours for a Bedroom Studio’ 2019, oil on board. Photo by James Caswell.
