Future Feminist Archive EXHIBITION, 1979 MARCH RECONSTRUCTION + FEMINIST ARCHIVES CURATED BY JO HOLDER & CATRIONA MOORE POSTERS PARTICIPATING ARTISTS / RESEARCHERS AND ASSOCIATES, ARCHIVES AND INSTITUTIONS Wollongong Art Gallery Collection ALISON ALDER / REDBACK GRAPHIX FUTURE FEMINIST ARCHIVE PRINT SET, 2016 WHEN THEY CLOSE A PIT, 1984 ALTERNATE TITLE: ‘KCC WOMEN’S AUXILLARY’ ALISON LOUISE KATE MINI DEBORAH SCREENPRINT, PRINTED IN COLOUR INKS, ALDER ANDERSON GRAFF KELLY ARCHIVES FROM FIVE STENCILS ON WHITE MATT WOVE LITHOGRAPHIC PAPER, PRINTED IMAGE: 74.4 X 49.4 CM, SHEET: 76 X 51 CM WORKING WITH WORKING WITH THE WORKING WITH WOL- WORKING WITH WOLLONGONG ART LIFE AND WORK OF LONGONG ART GALLERY, SYDNEY TRADES HALL GALLERY, UNIVERSITY PEARL GAMBANYI GIBBS WOLLONGONG CITY COLLECTION, NEALE ALISON ALDER / REDBACK GRAPHIX OF WOLLONGONG IN ASSOCIATION WITH LIBRARY LOCAL HISTO- TOWART ARCHIVIST K.C.C. WOMEN’S AUXILIARY AND ARCHIVES LYNETTE RILEY, DUBBO RY COLLECTION AND LIVE! LOCA ABORIGINAL LAND MILLERS POINT WOMEN JOBS FOR WOMEN, 1984 COUNCIL, BIG FAG PRESS IN PUBLIC HOUSING SCREENPRINT, PRINTED IN COLOUR INKS, TENANTS GROUP In Wollongong FROM FOUR STENCILS ON WHITE MATT – Live! Archives matter. The humanist values of archival care WOVE LITHOGRAPHIC PAPER. PRINTED and civic reckoning resonate alongside grim reminders of IMAGE: 74 X 49.5 CM FIONA RAQUEL LYNETTE MAREE BRACKER, JAN DAVIS, KARLA destroyed heritage around the world, telling us yet again MACDONALD ORMELLA RILEY DICKENS, JENNY KITCHENER, LEONIE INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY LEONIE LANE / REDBACK GRAPHIX that the power and politics of archival memory determine LANE, SHELAGH MORGAN, LIZ STOPS 1 INTERNATIONAL WORKING WITH WORKING WITH THE WORKING ON THE LIFE history’s winners and losers. Archival memory is never (COUNTRY WOMEN ARTISTS NORTHERN RIVERS CHAPTER) WOMEN’S DAY, 1986 VIVIENNE BINNS’ FULL WRITINGS OF JOAN AND WORK OF PEARL a question of the past, for it confirms what counts as FLIGHT (1981-83), ARTS KERR, VANESSA BERRY, GAMBANYI GIBBS, SCREENPRINT, PRINTED IN COLOUR INKS, WORKING WITH LISMORE REGIONAL GALLERY, 2 PRINTED IMAGE: 37 X 50 CM OUTWEST ARCHIVE THE DAAO (DESIGN MACQUARIE REGIONAL knowledge, right now and in the future. AND CHARLES STURT AND ART AUSTRALIA LIBRARY DUBBO, SOUTHERN CROSS UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ARTISTS’ UNIVERSITY, BATHURST ONLINE) UNSW WESTERN PLAINS BOOKS COLLECTIONS LISMORE CAMPUS REGIONAL ART GALLERY AUSTRALIAS CULTURAL CENTRE Artists know this. Contemporary art’s much-touted ‘historical DUBBO, NATIONAL CENTRE FOR CULTURAL turn’ draws upon feminist thought and action to intervene COMPETENCE THE and enliven the repositories of history and memory. The UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY artistic canon is itself a prestigious and hierarchizing form of archivisation, and women have fought long and hard for Ciara Phillips more diverse and inclusive exhibitions and purchases, public art commissions and related employment opportunities.3 & Jessie Street SLAM POETS FILM ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Decades on, feminism has itself generated a mass of archival materials. But what happened to those letraset or silkscreen LORIN ELIZABETH INTERVIEW WITH CARMELITA CATALOGUE DESIGN Witchworks posters you once pinned to your bedroom Women’s Library STEINKE, 1973 Lorin Elizabeth is a local Spoken Word BELLE BLAU DESIGN wall? Where are those old demo snaps and badges? Do you WIN TV ARCHIVES HELD AT WIN AND AT TO KEEP WOMEN’S WORDS, Poet who writes with a strong focus WOLLONGONG UNIVERSITY now wish that you’d interviewed and recorded your mum, ARCHIVES, UNIVERSITY OF WOMEN’S WORKS, ALIVE AND aunty or grandmother? What valuable herstories lurk in on sound, rhyme and meter, creating a WOLLONGONG POWERFUL, 2018 mixture of hip-hop and magic realism to NOW was set up in 1965 by Carmelita STEPHANIE DRUMMOND ARCHIVES OFFICER, your shelves or filing cabinets? Much of feminism’s archival SILK SCREEN POSTER engage live audiences. Steinke, a prominent media professional SUSAN JONES, ARCHIVIST AND MICHAEL material is vulnerable, as it was cheaply improvised and ORGAN and campaigner for women’s rights who predated the digital revolution. It is important to combine online In 2018 Jessie Street Women’s Library ISABELLA LUNA became well known in the Illawarra over JESSIE STREET WOMEN’S LIBRARY archivisation with the collection and care for analogue materials were invited by Glasgow based artist the following decades. The UOW Archives, SHERIE HILARIO not found in our mainstream cultural archives, just as most Ciara Phillips to collaborate on an artwork. Isabella Luna is a local Spoken Word women artists struggle to find a prominent place on the Net. Poet. Isabella and Lorin are both core based within the University Library, The connection was made via Glasgow SYDNEY TRADES HALL team members of Enough Said Poetry holds 7 boxes of records about NOW. Women’s Library. The workshop was part COLLECTION New Opportunities for Women was a Wol- Please join the open-ended Future Feminist Archive of the 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018) at Slam, organising poetry activities across HERITAGE CURATORS – NEALE TOWART longong based support group for women project, which kicked off in 2015, forty years after the 1975 the Museum of Contemporary Art. Phillips Wollongong and the Illawarra. AND BILL PIRRIE dealing with employment, childcare and Artwork: Wendy Murray, We Will March Because!, 2019, 1 colour screen print from Letraset artwork, edition of 10, 56 x 35.5 cm. International Women’s Year and those pioneering exhibitions highlights the strong historical connection Top photograph: Illawara Mercury, Saturday 9/3/1979. Wollongong City Libraries, Illawarra Mercury Photographic Negative Collection. KIRLI SAUNDERS discrimination. In the interview Carmelita KANDOS MUSEUM COLLECTION and actions promoting Australian women’s art. Despite this, between print-making and DIY or ‘agit- Steinke talks about her hopes for an end to HONORARY CURATOR, FIONA MACDONALD the subsequent United Nations call for a Women’s Decade and prop’ collaborative political and social Kirli Saunders is a proud Gunai woman prejudice for women in employment and the often-chanted slogan of ‘A Life Not Just A Year’, it was clear activism. She worked with a number with ties to the Yuin, Gundungurra, Ga- WIN TV NETWORK AND the importance of equal pay for women. that important materials were scattered and disappearing. We of groups committed to improving digal and Biripi people. She is a children’s UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG She comments that in the early 1970s the started to commission artist-researchers to work with hidden, the lives of women. The workshops author, poet, emerging playwright and ARCHIVE Wollongong region was still denied all the under-appreciated or inaccessible activist histories. Our case (8 participants) took place over three motorcyclist. Kirli is the Manager of PROVISION OF HISTORICAL FOOTAGE benefits of having a cultural centre, per- studies revealed the need to prioritise non-metropolitan weekly sessions of 3-5 hours each. Five Poetic Learning and Aboriginal Cultural forming arts theatre or regional art gallery. THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY archives, as many regional artists have a faint digital footprint, variations on a poster with Ursula Le Liaison at Red Room Poetry. and regional archives are often precarious. The goal is to create Guin’s ‘To Keep Women’s Words, Women’s THIS EXHIBITION IS DEDICATED TO communities of interest in metropolitan and regional areas to Works Alive and Powerful’ were printed. THE 1938 AND 1979 WOLLONGONG foster counter-histories to the narrative of ‘diminishment’, just as the (often voluntary) building and keeping of local archives, MARCHERS, AND THEIR LEGACY OF libraries, galleries, museums and keeping places stress the ARCHIVES DIVERSE YET UNITED SISTERHOOD! need to connect and communicate outwards to the world. >>> BADGES PERFORMERS SELECTED BADGES APPEAR ON T-SHIRTS WORN BY MARCHERS IN THE IWD 1979 MARCH (ILLAWARRA 1. Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook, ‘Archives, Records, Power: The Making of Modern MERCURY PHOTOGRAPHS). Memory’, Archival Science, 2, 2002, 1–19. LES FEMMES FATALES 2. Jacques Derrida, ‘Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression’, trans Eric Prenowitz, Diacritics, 25(2), Summer 1995, 9-63. KANDOS MUSEUM COLLECTION, KANDOS NSW 3. http://thecountessreport.com.au/ ; https://www.guerrillagirls.com/ Les Femmes Fatales are a folk-funereal DONATED BY: KATH BUTLER, WHO WAS BROUGHT UP IN WOLLONGONG, AND HER MOTHER MARGARET street-theatre band from the far-flung BUTLER WHO WAS A SCHOOL TEACHER IN WOLLONGONG fragments of Womengong! With a TRADES HALL COLLECTION, SYDNEY penchant for wandering through crowds 14 BADGES DONATED BY: CATHY BLOCH, NSW TEACHERS FEDERATION, SYDNEY AND WOLLONGONG; in dramatic costume; Les Femmes play AUDREY MCDONALD, UNION OF AUSTRALIAN WOMEN; PEACE DOVE, BRASS BADGE, SEAMEN’S UNION: DONATED BY KONDELEA (KNOWN AS DELLA) ELLIOTT (1917–2011), WHO IN THE 1950S WORKED FOR THE NOT A DAY funky jazz, blues and world music with WATERSIDE WORKERS’ FEDERATION, THEN SEAMEN’S UNION FROM 1955 TO 1988. IN RETIREMENT, SHE a hint of melancholia. We consist of bold HELPED ESTABLISH THE JESSIE STREET WOMEN’S LIBRARY; BILL PIRIE COLLECTION, SYDNEY TRADES HALL, HERITAGE OFFICER. See top graphic for selected badges. NOT A YEAR brass; way-wood woodwind; impertinent BUT A LIFE percussion and articulate artistes. Our PRIVATE COLLECTION, SYDNEY message is to promote women in music 2 BADGES, UNITED NATIONS DECADE FOR WOMEN, 1976-1985, EQUAL PAY YEAR, 1986. 8/3/1979 / 8/3/2019 and how life without the arts would be a life wasted. Fun, irreverent and TRADES HALL COLLECTION SYDNEY, FROM THE UNION OF AUSTRALIAN WOMEN interactive, Les Femmes Fatales packs a EQUALITY DEVELOPMENT PEACE / INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 1975 visual and sonic punch. UNION OF AUSTRALIAN WOMEN (1950-1996), SILK-SCREEN POSTER. DONATED BY: AUDREY MCDONALD. open Tues-Fri 10am-5pm Wollongong Art Gallery is a service of Wollongong City AUSTRALIAN WOMEN AVERAGE 66% OF MALE PAY weekends 12-4pm Council and receives assistance from the NSW Government UNION OF AUSTRALIAN WOMEN T-TOWEL. DONOR UNKNOWN. Corner Kembla & Burelli through Create NSW. Wollongong Art Gallery is a member of Regional and Public Galleries of NSW.