PREFACE

Marnie Dean has a long history of practicing in India as an artist, writer and a curator. From the time Dean was introduced and developed a friendship with senior Indian artist Nalini Malani in workshops associated with the 2002 Asia Pacific Triennial, she has forged a cross-cultural creative path. Dean has undertaken residencies and exhibited in India since 2005. For several years, while continuing her visual arts practice, Dean worked as a full-time curator with the Indian Chamber of Commerce in California and the US Asia Business Forum where she was based in Little India (Artesia) bringing contemporary Indian Art to Los Angeles. In 2011, after writing for an Indian Contemporary Art Journal she was invited to curate a feminist exhibition as a collateral project for the inaugural Kochi Muziris Biennale by Gallery owner Dilip Narayanan and patron Sanjay Tulysan. This exhibition titled Re-picturing the Feminine was included in the Australian Consulate of India’s Ozfest program and the Australian Federal Minister for the Arts nominated Dean for an Australian Asian Art Award for which she was a finalist in 2013. A derivative of this exhibition was mounted in Australia in 2013 titled Mythopoetic: Women Artists from Australia and India at both Griffith University Art Gallery and QCA Galleries at the Southbank Campus in Brisbane. The catalogue from this exhibition is below.

In 2014 the state minister for Tourism and the Arts of the then Andhra Pradesh, Madam Chandana Khan, invited Dean on a two-week residency at the Chitramayee State Gallery of Art and the Salarjung Museum in Hyderabad. Dean is now represented in the permanent collection of the Chitramayee State Gallery. Later in 2014 Dean undertook another residency in Kochi, Kerala that was to be for 6 months but extended to two years when the artist rescued a street dog she named Seema and commenced plans to relocate her to Australia. The Churning of the Ocean of Milk gives an account of the artists two years in Kochi solidifying her decade long cross-cultural practice. In the Churning of the Ocean of Milk Dean is able to deliver a visual integration of her experiences in the sub-continent with the concerns of her wider practice, opening to new possibilities and other places in the world. In 2017 Marnie Dean will undertake a 6-month residency in Penang, Malaysia together with her Indian dog Seema. When this residency is completed Seema will relocate to Australia permanently. a

Women Artists from Australia and India COVER IMAGE Pushpamala N. Indrajaala/Seduction 2012 (detail of video still), from the series Avega—The Passion: The Drama of Three Women, single-channel digital video (black- and-white, silent) 4:27 min (looped). Image courtesy of the artist and Nature Morte, New Delhi.

MYTHOPOETIC: WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA

10 April—18 May 2013 National Library of Catalogue design Australia Cataloguing- in-Publication entry Designer Da Wang Griffith University Author Art Gallery Marnie Dean Creative Director David Sargent PROJECT GALLERy Title WEBB GALLERY Mythopoetic: Women Artists from Client Manager Australia and India / Marnie Dean; Jacqui Hancox with Foreword by Naomi Evans and All at Griffith University’s Cassandra Schultz Liveworm Studio South Bank campus, Queensland College of Art ISBN Queensland College of Art, Griffith University 978-1-922216-01-4 226 Grey Street, South Bank, liveworm.com.au Brisbane Notes includes bibliographical references. Photography Curator: Marnie Dean Subjects Carl Warner, Ari Hatzis, Dhruvi Acharya, Kate Beynon, Di Ball, Lindsay Roberts and Laini Burton, Marnie Dean, Simone Mick Richards. Eisler, Fiona Hall, Pat Hoffie, Sonia Khurana, Pushpamala N., Ann-Maree Reaney, Jill Kinnear, Mandy Ridley, Sangeeta Sandrasegar, Shambhavi; Art, Modern-21st century; Art, Indian- Exhibitions; Art, Australian-Exhibitions Other Authors/Contributors Evans, Naomi Schultz, Cassandra Griffith University Art Gallery Queensland College of Art CONTENTS

3 fOREWORd Naomi Evans Acting Director | Curator Griffith Artworks and Griffith University Art Gallery Cassandra Schultz QCA Galleries Coordinator Queensland College of Art, Griffith University

4 Curatorial essay Mythopoetic: Women Artists from Australia and India Marnie Dean

10 Artist essays Marnie Dean

10 Dhruvi Acharya 12 Di Ball 14 Kate Beynon 16 Laini Burton 18 Marnie Dean 20 Simone Eisler 22 Fiona Hall 24 Pat Hoffie 26 Sonia Khurana 30 Pushpamala N. 32 Ann-Maree Reaney and Jill Kinnear 34 Mandy Ridley 36 Sangeeta Sandrasegar 38 Shambhavi

40 list of works

43 Acknowledgements

FOREWORD

Griffith University Art Gallery continent. Her previous exhibition, QCA Galleries present exhibitions 3 (GUAG) and Queensland College Re-Picturing the Feminine: New of, by, and for students, staff, of Art (QCA) Galleries are proudly and Hybrid Realities in the alumni, and relevant artists in a united for the first time to present Artworld—A Survey of Indian and range of galleries located on the the exhibition Mythopoetic: Australian Contemporary Female QCA campus and elsewhere. Women Artists from Australia Artists, staged in December 2012, The QCA Galleries provide vital and India across three venues at Gallery OED, Cochin, was a support and opportunity for located within the South Bank satellite event of the inaugural practitioners to present and campus of QCA. Mythopoetic Kochi-Muzuris Biennale. This engage with art. These galleries has come together to coincide exhibition presented a feminist are often the first place in which with the Encounters: India case to an Indian audience. Many student artists hold exhibitions, festival, organised by Queensland of the artists from this earlier and through this exposure, gain Conservatorium of Music. GUAG exhibition are again represented a further audience beyond and QCA Galleries are delighted in Mythopoetic in a continuation the institution. QCA Galleries to be satellite venues for this of the dialogue begun in the nurture fledgling artists in a major event, which takes place Cochin exhibition. Here the artists tiered experience offered in a across the South Bank cultural elaborate further, reclaiming and safe space, to experiment and precinct and Brisbane city, creating new mythologies while begin their practice while moving charting connections between firmly situated as both female and through increasingly professional the philosophies and cultures of empowered. activities that ground them for Australia and India. a longer career in the wider Dean’s work as an artist is also arts world. Exhibitions such The exhibition is a culmination of featured in this exhibition. In the as Mythopoetic situate these many interwoven collaborative work titled Morrigan-Kali the fledgling artists in a context of efforts spanning cultures and “SHE-WOLF”: Wave of the Future, excellence alongside professional localities from India to South Dean recontextualises feminine artists, many of whom are Bank. Emerging curator Marnie myths pertinent to her own foremost in their field. Dean has brought together the identity, leading the call to women works of fifteen artists who are to write their own mythologies. Mythopoetic represents a connected through their individual Mythopoetic brings to light new fruitful opportunity for our two explorations of mythology. In possibilities by exclaiming, in multifaceted organisations each case, the works reflect an a female chorus, the ancient to work together, eloquently engagement with mythologies, and contemporary mythologies demonstrating a shared goal their legacies, and how these of existence, travel, discovery, of fostering understanding and impact on their subjectivity as creation, destruction, and rebirth. excellence in art. females and as artists. The varied GUAG is a free public gallery Naomi Evans and diverse works span a range located at the QCA’s South Bank Director, GUAG of mediums, reflecting the rich campus. A diverse and rigorous and broad topic. Cassandra Lehman-Schultz range of exhibitions are generated QCA Galleries Coordinator This exhibition continues Dean’s and displayed in-house and/or curatorial efforts in uniting and toured throughout regional, state giving agency to the voices of or national galleries in a bid to women, with particular reference focus attention on contemporary to her passion for, and personal practices and their historical connection to, the Indian sub- contexts. Marnie Dean

MYTHOPOETIC: WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA

4 As the term in the title suggests, Defining her own anti-essentialist Mythopoetic: Women Artists mythopoetic is a play on the stand-point, author Donna from Australia and India, provides Latin-derived word mythopoeic— Haraway concludes her famous a context for Haraway’s notion of or pertaining to the making of “Cyborg Manifesto” with the of new mythologies in new myths.1 The significance of myth words, “Though both are bound directions and is, in accordance and mythology is often assigned in the spiral dance, I would rather with her ideology, a “self- empirical value, art historically, in be a cyborg than a goddess.”4 consciously constructed space semiotics. From this currency of that cannot affirm the capacity This statement summarises signs, myth is seen as an order of to act on the basis of natural Haraway’s findings. She wanted signification connoting meaning identification, but only on the women to create new mythology; to a wider society. It contains basis of conscious coalition, of new representations of women visual language that is relevant to affinity, of political kinship”.5 were needed. Haraway’s idea was the society and culture in which that these new mythologies could The exhibition looks at the strong it belongs. George Lakoff and adequately characterise women contemporary art emerging Mark Johnson suggest that “Like in modern times and move from India and the intersections metaphors, myths help us to beyond the binary oppositions this provides artists locally and make sense of our experiences that had generated the prevailing nationally within Australia. By WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA within a culture.”2 gendered perceptions. In choosing India and Australia Invested with this knowledge, particular, she scrutinised the as key regions for this dialogue, artists aligned with the second common identification between the exhibition holds an open wave of feminism attempted to women and nature; she believed space to demonstrate cultural re-introduce symbols and visual identification with both nature and difference and a cross-cultural MYTHOPOETIC: iconography that belonged to technology was more accurate array in which women artists are old mythology and matriarchal and that the character of modern both directly (as part of the intent societies of ancient history. women was derived from of their work) and indirectly (as Symbols like goddesses, hybridity and multiplicity. a by-product of their work and Sheela Na Gig, the spiral and practice) creating myth-making In the twenty-two years since yoni/vulvic or vaginal forms gestures, new myths, and Haraway made this statement, that Judy Chicago and Miriam mythologies through their artistic contemporary artists have Schapiro identified as “central- processes. These are evidenced participated in developing core imagery”,3 were used as in the visual languages generated new knowledge within diverse rhetorical devices representing by the embodiment and themes and often overlapping cultural united female sexuality and of the stories, histories, and realms. Women artists involved in power. As the feminist art images in the work of each artist. such practices have developed movement progressed to include Within Haraway’s framework, sophisticated and creative anti-essentialism, along with collectively, these diverse visual methodologies to engage with postmodern interpretation, the languages may be viewed as society in a variety of ways, and context for a unifying symbology contributing to a developing through their artistic endeavours no longer existed. Old symbols, visual culture in contemporary art have introduced new knowledge archetypes, and goddesses were practice within the wider South to popular culture. Following this no longer adequate in gendered Asian and Asia Pacific regions. example and bringing together representations of women. This wider culture is important to two cultures in multifarious begin to document because, as disciplines, the exhibition Charles Green suggests, When we think about art in wider implications) and their converge, revealing the affinities 5 this region, the most crucial, critical visual expressions. It inherent in this emerging visual but also the most blurred, is also a visual culture that is culture. These relationships are questions focus on how representative of a current important because they operate artists define themselves in episteme—its impact can cross-culturally in a wider context, relation to their own cultures— be multi-directional and is and demonstrate the shared and how, at the same time, aesthetically assembled by codes, concerns, dynamics, they come to terms with the the interaction of networks of and lexicon (in accordance particularly diasporic nature signification. with Haraway’s anti-essentialist of contemporary global art.6 slant) contributing to the visual The word mythopoetic represents languages converging to form It is significant that women the context for survey in this visual culture in Mythopoetic. artists from different cultures, exhibition. The context for survey with diverse backgrounds, are is the way each artist is creating In observing all the works in engaged in self-determining gestures towards mythologising the three exhibition spaces, contemporary practice that is re- from their place in the world (in some factors are instantly writing and creating mythologies relation to India and Australia), recognisable. These are (directly and indirectly) as a mode and how they make sense of the affinities or the “causal of expression to navigate their that place (globally). Within the relations” (as Michel Foucault individual and global culture. The parameters of Australia and suggests, causal relations occurrence of this method in India India, Haraway’s concept and are the places of intersection and Australia may be attributed the exhibition’s wider inclusion in between knowledge systems to the activism and interventions Griffith University’s Encounters: and networks of signification8) of feminisms globally; as India festival, Australian works shaping the formation of visual Judith Brodsky and Ferris Olin included in Mythopoetic have culture created by women artists. suggest, “feminist innovations a dialogue to, and with, an The places of intersection shared have become so thoroughly Indian milieu—either through by the artists in Mythopoetic are embedded in contemporary content or through physical shared approaches in artistic perspectives”,7 and both relationship (with the artist or process, theme, and practice countries have well-documented their work linked to the Indian that may be viewed as gestures feminist practices. The emerging contemporary art scene, with a (whether indirect or direct) toward visual culture highlighted by this history of mythologising in their mythologising, and do not make exhibition provides grounds for contemporary practice). Artists in claims for any imposed natural new knowledge to emerge and, this exhibition are re-picturing, re- identification or a priori between while requiring further research to contextualising and re-imagining the works, they are instances of examine the causes and effects, the feminine in myriad ways and connection only. Within a broader it evidences the impact of global addressing subjects such as the structure that encompasses culture on women artists with body, identity, history, gendered individual creative practice, and shared colonial and postcolonial roles, subjectivity, sexuality, allows cross-cultural difference, histories across the common hybridity, and globalisation. a formal analysis of causal divide of east and west. Within The exhibition is situated in relations can be made to assist this sphere, Mythopoetic is a three separate spaces, which to define knowledge systems visual documentation of women provides a wider context in which associated with the visual in the Asia Pacific and South discontinuous and analogous culture Mythopoetic defines. The Asian region (and, as such, has elements in individual works definition of these indices will be made and evidenced through an their own purposes. In varying culture. This is different from exploration of each artist’s work, degrees, artists in Mythopoetic the second-wave feminists who with a brief history contextualising use popular culture to offer attempted to use similar symbols this aspect of their practice. alternative representations to and myths to engender signs Thus the curatorial framework the dominant depictions of the with unified symbolic meaning. for Mythopoetic maintains the gendered feminine (art historically, Seeing the mythical figure as a anti-essentialist boundaries culturally, and corporeally) and, powerful precursor of the abject of Haraway’s argument, in particular, employ it to make stereotype, many of the artists encompassing space to include gestures towards creating new in Mythopoetic use existing the cultural differences, individual mythologies. The artists in this mythology to represent the artistic integrities, ideologies and exhibition use popular culture complexities of current society, intentions of each participating to create a new visual culture, which cannot be represented artist, while evidencing the employing populist lexicon to by any unifying forms; instead, emerging visual culture and define their own unique networks individual artists prescribe image documenting the space from of signification. codes that are relevant to their which its contributions to own location, experiences, and An apt example of the knowledge systems can be made. lives as women.10 Indeed, in this appropriation and integration of exhibition, there are overlapping popular culture is evidenced in uses of the same mythological 6 the visual lexicon of artist Kate MYTHOPOETIC— figures with different and equally Beynon. Beynon has a well- POPULAR CULTURE challenging and thought- documented visual language An immediate observation that provoking representations. Three that appropriates from popular can be made of Mythopoetic is different artists portray the Greco- culture’s aesthetic forms. Her the confluence of popular culture Roman figure of the Gorgon- visual lexicon is vast, with in many of the works in. Artists Medusa differently. Sangeeta symbols, talismans, motifs, and employ different methodologies Sandrasegar reclaims Medusa’s imagery belonging to her diverse to mimic, appropriate, repeat, creative powers from the realms heritage and her use of popular manipulate, and employ of shadow as a hybrid symbol culture is essential to her practice. aesthetics from popular culture. of women today; Kate Beynon Indian artist Pushpamala N. is Further, they are engaged in cleverly transmutes the original renowned for her sophisticated practices that borrow from a wide into her Transfigured Gorgon and accomplished emulations variety of popular-culture forms, (2012) as an empowering anti- of various visual languages from including cinema, animation, racist figure; and I, Marnie Dean, the history of Indian popular fashion, advertising, anime, reality borrow Sylvia Plath’s account of culture; she creates series of television, digital aesthetics, Medusa as a Jellyfish, depicting photographic/performative

WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA cartoons, comics etc., and they transforming attitudes about tableaux, and videos/films in are expert in manipulating the women’s sexuality. which the artist, a chameleon, genre codes inherent to those assumes the roles of various Other artists in Mythopoetic also forms. The manipulation of characters. undertake re-interpretations of these aesthetic traditions allows historical and mythical figures. artists to construct unique visual MYTHOPOETIC: Indian artist Sonia Khurana re- languages that both reflect and MYTHOPOETIC— works the tropes of the tramp and penetrate the wider cultures they RE-MYTHOLOGISING the modernist man-about-town, are immersed in. Traditionally in Symbolic transactions towards the flâneur, into new archetypical/ contemporary art, new mythologies can be achieved stereotypical forms, encoded with popular culture presents itself through the use of existing subjective inference. With her own as its own “medium”—one archetypes or stereotypes name referring to the Goddess that on the surface seems from traditional mythology. In Durga, a figure with a close familiar and reassuring the process of creating the association to the Hindu Goddess but baits and switches new, many of the artists in Kali, artist Shambhavi re-assigns audiences into an awareness Mythopoetic use various meaning to the classical sign of the feminist potential, an existing archetypes, stories and of the Goddess’s tongue oppositional re-reading of the symbols and re-contextualise (traditionally portrayed in Hindu original, and sometimes both their symbolic meanings, Art) to represent the potential at the same time.9 ascribing existent signs with new for violence in modern India as implications that are relevant to an experience of a universal While not all of the artists the cultures artists are engaged human condition. Pushpamala N. participating in Mythopoetic with today. To this effect, these employs mimesis to re-define the have a distinctly feminist agenda, artists bring old mythologies, famous villain from the Ramayana, many make use of the rhetorical stories, and archetypes to the ‘surpanakha’, into a new form power of popular cultures as a present moment and global and semblance, amalgamating medium, manipulating them for existing stereotypes such as the are more prominent than direct merged aspects of traditional “Native South Indian Woman”, or linear sign systems. If direct archetypes to create a pantheon the “Femme Fatale”, the “Witch symbolic order exists, it will, of new hybrid goddesses and Doctor”, the “shaman” and concurrently, find relationship with mythic figures, reflecting the the “Noble Savage”. Australian discursive signification elsewhere diversity of multicultural Australia, artist Laini Burton adopts the in the work. In portraying a offering commentary about masculine Atlas figure from mythology that might begin racism and bigotry. Greco-Roman form to represent to illustrate women today, the the contemporary condition examples offered in Mythopoetic of women “wanting to have it embrace difference, simulacra, MYTHOPOETIC— all”, transforming the body of and polyvalent agencies to define RE-ORDERING Atlas into metamorphic female visual culture.11 TAXONOMIES/ form. The simultaneity of these EPISTEMOLOGIES In Mythopoetic, numerous artists pre-figured critiques reinforce Another method evident in represent new mythologies Haraway’s position and offer the Mythopoetic is the incidence and new symbolic orders in viewer familiarity with alternatives of artists re-ordering taxonomic distinctive ways. For example, and new insight. and epistemic relationships, Sonia Khurana creates a new to create new context, symbolic order by subsuming consequence and meaning. 7 MYTHOPOETIC— the male gaze through the re- By manipulating nomenclature NEW ARCHETYPES positioning of her body in space and the structures surrounding in her work. The artist embodies In working to offer alternatives to systems of knowledge, these spaces in different ways, the universality of the prevailing artists disrupt traditional privileging the everyday and masculinised representations of relationships between space the horizontal over the vertical gendered female forms, many and symbolic classification, with axis. Khurana reconfigures women artists (as exemplified consequences that can affect symbolic order and creates in Mythopoetic, in accordance “order” beyond visual realms. new subjective archetypes such with Haraway) create new By re-ordering the relationships as the “artist-as-landscape” stereotypes and archetypal signs. between structures inherent (in Logic of Birds 2006) and Often women artists create the in society, culture and politics, a nomadic global figure that “new” through the hybridisation these artists bring awareness conversely makes performative of existing forms; sometimes to the temporal connections gestures “lying down” as an they depict the experience of in empirical organisation. They empowered act of sovereignty. the evolution of cultural and question the ascriptions given Australian artist Simone Eisler political space in the sociological to representation and the creates new chimeric sculptural landscape, such as through fundamental order of cultures, forms in installational suites migration or globalisation; and examining art historical canons by hybridising the landscapes sometimes new signs and and historicity, bringing from her heritage with the symbols are developed with the awareness to alteriority and Australian terrain, crafting an intervention of new knowledge marginal positions. By re- “animalia” that reflects twenty- systems, such as the rapidly establishing the relationships first-century technologies literally, changing fields of science, between epistemic indices, and the transformative powers medicine and even by digital new networks of economies, of humanity, metaphorically. means. New mythologies are knowledge, and symbolic Inspired by the comic books of created through combining the meaning (visual culture) can her childhood, Dhruvi Acharya personal with the universal, the emerge. This type of investigation creates an unusual pantheon of corporeal with the incorporeal, can be entered into in a variety female protagonists that she has the objective with the subjective, of ways, to formulate new endowed with special powers. and through other dynamic visual culture. The obvious Her women have the ability to juxtapositions that integrate example is a conceptual re- communicate via processes that seemingly polarised positions, ordering, where symbolism is replicate cellular biology and offering a range of multiplicity to altered, with immediate semiotic comic books; her women are the viewer. In the symbolic order consequences. The way a hybrid botanic forms. Acharya of such new mythologies as those work of art is named and the has created her women to presented in Mythopoetic, the value attributed to it are other symbolise the changing social- denotation of the signified cannot obvious examples of taxonomic structures in middle-class India. be presumed; “woman” as a sign reconfiguration. However, these It is a unique and personal does not automatically equate reconfigurations can have more mythos. Kate Beynon has a an image crux—the semiotics subtle visual consequences long history of mythologising are far more pluralistic than that. through a multitude of different in her practice in myriad ways. Indirect networks of signification approaches. For Mythopoetic, Beynon has that operate via interconnection 8 A good example of this MYTHOPOETIC—HYBRID to the visual culture of this methodology exists in the work AND PLURAL VISUALITY exhibition. The work of each of Australian artist Pat Hoffie, In defining the primary “causal artist is explored within the who reconfigures taxonomic relations” in the visual culture context of a new mythology and and epistemic mores in her in Mythopoetic, the existence through their alignment with the practice through her production of hybridity and plurality is also aforementioned categories, with methods. Hoffie draws the apparent. Visually, this occurs reference to each artist’s wider viewer’s attention to the existence at many levels in the work: oeuvre and practice, giving a of poverty in the developing symbolically, literally, perceptively, brief account of creative careers. world, with a particular focus on and aesthetically. A hybrid and Specifically, the cross-cultural the ascriptions of value given plural position is privileged in the dialogue existing between Indian within the global art market. By visual culture of Mythopoetic. It is and Australian women artists employing artisans in developing often represented as subjective, and their work has generated countries to make her work, offering a different stance to the existence of specific zones Hoffie has been able to expand the prevailing uni-central and of connection, which are defined the networks available to phallocentric position in art- as the causal relations that those artisans and assign new historical canons. What replaces foreground the visual culture WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA symbolic meaning to society. the primarily, objective and represented by this exhibition This changes symbolic order singular gaze of masculinised Mythopoetic: Women Artists from and creates new archetypes visual culture in Mythopoetic is Australia and India. with new visual culture. Another an approach which is multifarious excellent example of the use at every level of representation.

MYTHOPOETIC: of this methodology to devise Within the boundaries of hybridity new myths is seen in the and plurality, cultural difference is work of Australian artist Fiona easily integrated, as is individual Hall, who has a long history of artistic practice. Through creating work with epistemic and hybridity and plurality, disparity, taxonomic reconfigurations. She dissonance, and difference employs different methods to can co-exist in a broader visual undertake her interventions. In culture that also makes reference Mythopoetic, it is the materiality of to affinity and mutuality in the artist’s work that reconfigures the process of realising new the normal associations between mythologies related to the diverse symbolic meaning, taxonomy, experiences of women from and epistemology. The material different cultures in today’s global she uses to make her work world. disrupts the viewer’s normal associations between the “visual, In the following explorations of cultural and symbolic orders”; in each artist’s work in Mythopoetic, the process Hall depicts a new particular reference is made archetypal and stereotypical 21st to the categories defined as Century Man (2011). the causal relations belonging Notes 9 1. “Mythopoeic,” The Macquarie Dictionary, 9. See Maria Elena Buszek’s article that 2nd ed. (Sydney: Macquarie Library, explores the use of popular culture in Macquarie University, 1987), 1133. women artists’ practice, titled “Once 2. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, More, with Feeling. Feminist Art and Pop Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: Culture Now,” Art Pulse Magazine 3, no. University of Chicago Press, 1980). 4 (Summer 2012). 3. Please see Judy Chicago and Miriam 10. Geeta Kapur explores the impact of Schapiro’s article that defines “central global feminisms on contemporary art core imagery”, “Female Imagery,” through the practice of five women Womanspace Journal 1, no. 3 (Summer artists from India. In the beginning of 1973): 11–14. the essay she explores the semiotics of “women as image” through an account 4. Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: given by Rosalind Krauss, in feminist Science, Technology, and Socialist- practice and I borrow her idea (about Feminism in the Late Twentieth the deconstruction of the masculinised Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs and gazes [via global feminisms] privileged Women: The Reinvention of Nature in art historical canons) to provide (New York; Routledge, 1991), 181. Full an example of the aesthetics in article available online through Stanford Mythopoetic in the first paragraph University, http://www.stanford.edu/ under the sub-title “Mythopoetic—New dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto. Archetypes”; two of the artists the html. author investigates in this essay are 5. Ibid., 155. To begin to locate the also in this exhibition. Kapur, “Gender position and parameters of the Mobility: Through the Lens of Five curatorial framework and context for Women Artists in India,” in Global survey in Mythopoetic: Women Artists Feminisms, ex. cat., ed. Maura Reilly from Australia and India, I borrow the and Linda Nochlin (New York: Brooklyn statement in which Donna Haraway Museum and Merrell, 2007), 79. defines her anti-essentialist feminist 11. Geeta Kapur introduces the concept of space. re-mythologising in feminist art practice 6. Charles Green, “Beyond the Future: The through a discussion of the work and Third Asia-Pacific Triennial,” Art Journal practice of artist Nalini Malani in her 58, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 81. In this essay “Gender Mobility”, 83. article, Green discusses the position of contemporary artists from the Asia Pacific (specifically India and Australia). 7. Judith Brodsky and Ferris Olin explore the impact of feminisms in society generally and contemporary art specifically in the article “Stepping Out of the Beaten Path: Reassessing the Feminist Art Movement,” Signs 33, no. 2 (2008). 8. Michel Foucault’s concept of “causal relations” are the places in which disparate knowledge systems overlap, in shared zones of connection and commonality. Foucault addresses this subject broadly through his definition of a modern episteme in the chapter titled “The Human Sciences”, in his book The Order of Things (London and New York: Routledge, 1966). A particular passage describing the structure of the modern episteme and causal relations may be found on page 378. 10

DHRUVI ACHARYA METAMORPHOSIS—WOMEN IN THE METROPOLIS WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA Dhruvi Archarya spent her early and a nonchalant, almost who, according to the artist, life in India. She committed to self-obsessed preoccupation; inhabit “a world where thoughts her painting practice when she their attitude represents a visual are as visible as ‘reality’, and moved to the United States and, account of the psychological where the protagonists live and

MYTHOPOETIC: homesick, began to depict an impact of city life. What emerges metamorphose by the logic of imagined world in works inspired collectively in her paintings that world.”1 by her longing for her motherland. are new archetypal depictions In her work titled Mumbai City This imagined world has evolved of women in India. Acharya’s (2009), Dhruvi continues this into a sophisticated and unique India has a rising middle-class, exercise, in a figurative allegory visual language that aesthetically changing social structures, and is of domestic-dwelling female finds roots in the popular culture represented in a gendered space protagonists inhabiting an of Amar Chitra Katha comics with women protagonists whose imagined city. Acharya endows (which Acharya read as a civic liberties are fundamentally her protagonists with guru- child), American graffitti culture, affected by globalisation. While like qualities that give them miniature painting, and colour- her women are “housewives” and authority; they are no ordinary field theory as prescribed by the often connected to the home, housewives—they have evolved abstract expressionist Grace Dhruvi endows her figures with into hybrid forms. Their hybridity Hartigan (whom Acharya studied extra powers that assist them to portrays the resolve necessary with). Acharya’s works explore negate boredom and isolation, to adapt to the infringing plurality the banalities of metropolitan and navigate a complex world. of modern India. In Acharya’s life and are intermeshed with Her figures have amoeba-like mythology, women mimic nature, more serious imagery, depicting abilities to transfer information, providing the fertile substance pollution and the negative thoughts, and feelings in ways that supports the city. She effects of urbanisation in India. that replicate processes in represents the inter-generational The female figures in her work cellular biology and comics. relationships between women as negotiate these mixed and Her women are hybridised with a social structure that transforms polarising terrains with humour botanic life, unusual chimeras 11

Dhruvi Achary Mumbai City 2008, diptych: digital print on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist and Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai.

into the landscape of this city. Mumbai, which is one of the most populated and polluted centres in the world, is characterised in a manifestly feminine framework, with a structure that is organic and permeable. After spending ten years in the United States, Dhruvi now works in Mumbai. Her paintings have been shown in museums, galleries, and art fairs around the world, including the San Jose Museum of Art, USA, in 2011, and the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, in 2004. A large-scale digital mural was commissioned by Mumbai International Airport in 2009. 1. Dhruvi Acharya, correspondence with the author, 27 August 2012. DI BALL MULTIPLE SELVES—MYTHOLOGISING PERSONAE

12 Di Ball is a new media artist with (a reference to her earlier career). of a lake at sunset, quickly a long history of “performing Di Ball is the “architect” of a marred by the din of traffic. selves”. Ball had an early creative growing mythology, which has an She wasn”t looking for God, life working as an architect, interface at www.theballpark.com. and never found her... But where a flair for performance au. The “BallPark” is a creative she found her voice again found an outlet designing theme practice founded in digital in Kerala where her heart parks. Her creative practice and feminist theories, which sang. Her smile returned. progressed into the visual encompasses digital imaging, Her laughter was heard.3 arts, where she first emerged web-art, blogging, installation and The video was originally playing the role of the Hindu video. In the video work featured commissioned for inclusion in a Goddess Kali, in performances in Mythopoetic, Di Ball explores collateral exhibition to the Kochi for Luke Robert’s Pope Alice. Ball a relatively new persona called Muziris Biennale in 2012, and so continued to hone her practice “binDi Ball”. It is a play on the Ball set forth on a journey all over and was an early pioneer of word bindi, which she says is the India in the months preceding digital art in Queensland, with HOT SPOT: The area the Biennale to find the self that artwork constructed around her between the eyebrows, would emerge in India. The “performing selves”, in which known as “Ajna” meaning video reflects the gaze of Ball’s WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA she assumes various characters “command”, the seat of Indian persona “binDi”, as she including “Fleur Ball”, “iBall”, “Glo concealed wisdom. It is meanders through the landscape Ball” and “Beach Ball”. Linda the centre point wherein all of Varanasi and other parts of Carroli explains Ball’s modus experience is gathered in India. The video is presented in operandi, suggesting that, total concentration.2 circular format, another reference MYTHOPOETIC: By evoking these myriad to “BinDi”. What emerges through For Ball, her character “binDi Ball” avatars, Di is asking this video is Ball’s subjective encompasses both her name whether it is possible for experience; it is a reclamation and the word bindi phonetically anyone to really “know of the value of womanhood, and symbolically. The work thyself”, despite the removing the veils of ideology begins with the artist applying Apollonaire doctrine which prescribed by popularist notions the blue paint of her former self commands it, because the regarding femininity and age. As and the Kali persona. The paint multiplied self is constantly Ball’s journey progresses beauty disappears and re-appears, as in flux. Subsequently, in is revealed, an un-superficial layers of truth are revealed; Ball the presentation of this reality, in contrast with the title of relates the journey, cacophony of personae, Di the work. deploys technologies of self, So binDi set off to India and Di Ball has exhibited her work gender and subjectivity.1 attempted to peel back nationally and internationally, the veils. But India was not Ball’s multiple selves are participating at ISEA Singapore always kind to her, the photo performance personas and digital (2008), Re-Picturing the Feminine, shoot beauty a mere layer. avatars, each with their own Gallery OED, a collateral She was older now, a young distinct narrative, each an aspect exhibition of the Kochi Muziris mind trapped in the body of of the artist that is integrated as a Biennale Open (2012) and has a 60 year old. It was difficult. larger mythology, a very personal participated in the Nes Arts She visited forts and palaces, mythology and a logo called the Residency in Iceland (2009) and and wished they were not all BallPark, accompanied with the ISEA Istanbul (2010). Di Ball lives built on the top of hills. She axiom my life is/as a theme park and works in Brisbane. experienced the stillness 13

Di Ball BinDi Ball Is Deeply Superficial 2012 (video still), single-channel digital video, 15 min, (looped). Image courtesy of the artist.

1. See Linda Carroli, “The Ball Park,” 2000, accessed 1 April 2013, http://www. theballpark.com.au/aboutkrystal.htm. 2. Di Ball, artist statement from “Re- Picturing the Feminine”, Gallery OED Cochin, collateral venue to the Kochi Muziris Biennale Open, 12 December 2012–28 February 2013. 3. Ball, ibid. KATE BEYNON HYBRIDITY—TRANS-CULTURE & NEW MYTHOLOGIES

14 Kate Beynon is a prominent artist that do not privilege any singular “little red-riding-hood”, however in the Asian and Pacific regions, ethnicity, but, in the artist’s own Beynon’s version has come whose practice has morphed over words, represent “hybrid cultural prepared to ward off any wolf, time. From early interventions identity, through imagining represented as a formidable with language to the “grrrl-power” transcultural reinterpretations of opponent to predators, with exploits and digital interventions female mythic figures”.2 The titles a protective breast-plate, and of her avatar “Li Ji: Warrior Girl” of the works in the Trans-Mythic accompanied by her three (2000), she has explored issues Woman Warrior Series allude to courageous lion dogs, a familiar related to identity and the politics their hybrid nature: Transfigured motif in Beynon’s work. Beynon’s of race and globalisation in iconic Gorgon, Nine-Tailed Fox Spirit, Nine-Tailed Fox Spirit is a roving imagery that attempts to depict Warrior Mer-Woman, Transcultural environmentalist, capable of her “complex hybrid self”. Beynon Spider Goddess, and Guardian shape-shifting and merging into has a distinctive and instantly Ranger with Lion Dogs. Beynon the physical landscape with recognisable visual language with describes them, explaining camouflage, preparing her to well-documented symbology cope in any circumstance, while Centrally featured, the that has been appropriated keeping her “foxy” wits about her. green-eyed dragon-haired from her diverse heritage, which The camouflage she is wearing in Transfigured Gorgon, who WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA includes Chinese, Malay, Welsh, this guise features a print based specifically turns bigots to and Norwegian ancestry. Anna on ginko (or “gingko biloba”) stone, is surrounded by Edmundson explains that leaves, the unique species of four other figures: the Nine “Beynon’s work has evolved ancient Chinese tree thought to Tailed Fox Spirit—a shape- its own distinct lexicon, which have nutritional and medicinal shifter—inspired by Chinese

MYTHOPOETIC: draws on the visual genres of properties. Beynon’s Transcultural and Japanese folk stories, a Eastern and Western comic book Spider Goddess is a networker Warrior Mer-woman with Tai graphics, Chinese calligraphy with an impressive ability to Chi blade and robe adorned and late-twentieth-century graffiti weave webs of communication with deep sea creatures, a art.”1 The diverse influences in and understanding between Transcultural Spider Goddess her visual language also include cultures. Presented in the pose with 8 eyes and limbs, and anime, fashion, and the artist’s of a yoga asana, the figure is a cloaked Guardian Ranger family life. also capable of dealing with the with bow and arrows, stresses of modern life (a link to Beynon creates her own accompanied by lion dog Beynon’s use of talismans and mythology via a pantheon of protectors.3 symbols in earlier series). Her archetypal forms. The works in Beynon’s growing pantheon Warrior Mer-Woman is an expert the Trans-Mythic Woman Warrior shrewdly reconfigures female martial-artist and no longer a series (2012) are new works by bodies to place them into the passive mermaid without legs, the artist, commissioned for a context of a contemporary Beynon’s mer-woman has agency. collateral exhibition to the Kochi Australian and an, ever growing, Muziris Biennale. The five circular Transfigured Gorgon, an globalised world. Her trans- paintings introduce the concept appropriation of the Greco- mythic figures are new archetypes of Australian hybridity and Roman Medusa, is translated into that she has created, combining multiculturalism to the Australian- a figure with a firm female gaze, beneficial attributes from previous Indian cross-cultural dialogue. possessing an anti-racist agenda. myths. In particular, the painting The series re-pictures feminine The hybrid figure of the Medusa, Guardian Ranger with Lion Dogs gendered imagery to include half-woman, half-monster, has plays on a visual familiarity with portrayals of new archetypes been perceived as an outsider 15

Kate Beynon Transfigured Gorgon (from the Trans-Mythic Woman Warrior series) 2012, acrylic paint and Swarovski crystals on canvas. Images courtesy of the artist, Milani Gallery, Brisbane, and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne.

historically in history, myth and whatever that may mean to them. numerous collections, including poetry. “Medusa became the However, for Beynon, society the Museum of Contemporary only mortal among three Gorgon has the ability to transform, just Art, Sydney and the Museum sisters. The adjective gorgos like her Gorgon; in a final gesture, of Modern Art (MMK), Frankfurt, (gorg’j) means ‘terrible’, ‘fierce’, Beynon has imbued the figure Germany. Beynon participated in and ‘frightful’.”4 For Beynon, the with redemptive powers: “the Re-Picturing the Feminine, Gallery Gorgon Medusa is cast into the Transfigured Gorgon has the OED, a collateral exhibition to gaze of multicultural Australia power to release those (from the 2012 Kochi Muziris Biennale and the world. She is a hybrid their stony form) who reflect Open in India, and was a judge figure capable of seeing and enough to seek knowledge and the 2013 Sir John Sulman Prize, perceiving; she has the power to understanding to transform Art Gallery of New South Wales. meet that gaze, to deconstruct, their negative and previously ill- 1. Anna Edmundson, “The ‘Crisis’ of to subsume and to overthrow informed mindset to a genuinely Multiculturalism Examined through the objectification, misogyny, and all non-bigoted, new way of Work of Four Asian-Australian Artists,” forms of prejudice/discrimination/ thinking”.5 Humanities Research 15, no. 2 (2009): 106. hatred with anti-bigotry powers Beynon has exhibited her work 2. Kate Beynon, correspondence with the that “turn only bigots to stone”. internationally. She participated author, 7 December 2012. In this phrase and gesture, the in the groundbreaking Global 3. Ibid. artist reveals the racist potential Feminisms exhibition at the 4. Miriam Robbins Dexter, “The Ferocious in contemporary life. Transfigured Brooklyn Museum in 2007, and the Erotic: ‘Beautiful’ Medusa and Gorgon may symbolically the Neolithic Bird and Snake,” Journal curated by Maura Reilly and represent the migrant or the sub- of Feminist Studies in Religion 26, no. 1 Linda Nochlin. She has mounted (2010): 25. altern, or any marginalised hybrid many solo exhibitions and has 5. Beynon, correspondance with the author, being, whose very existence is been a finalist in the Archibald 7 December 2012. as threatening, “terrible, fierce or Prize, Art Gallery of New South frightful” as the mythical Medusa, Wales, in 2006, 2010, 2011 to those in society frightened and 2012. Her work is held in by the experience of “other”, LAINI BURTON THE BODY—WOMEN IN VISUAL CULTURE

16 Laini Burton is a visual artist, around which the heavens and for Burton a fulfilling creative critical theorist, and academic revolve. I identify with and life. The figure in the work is with a creative practice that embody Atlas, carrying the holding cords bound to bird- includes sculpture, painting, weight of the world while like figures who fly effortlessly drawing, installation, and writing. being directed by the things away, suggesting that there is a Her early work revealed the that matter most. This freedom that privileges twenty- prejudices placed on women work honours all those first-century women, who can in visual culture and the history able women who, like have it all in a balanced life. The that prefaced this through me, demand the right to a challenge is in the balance that for identifying the roles of power and professional, creative identity Burton’s figure holds the process agency in feminine masquerade while still attending to the of creation in the womb, a and carnival. Burton’s creative necessary and complex yet reference to the gendered space practice explores the politics wondrous role of being a 21st in the work. of the body in space and visual century woman.1 Dr. Laini Burton has completed culture, emphasising the role of Burton transfigures the classical a major publication with Intellect gender politics and gendered male icon from Greco-Roman Journals, UK, in collaboration space in popular visual culture, mythology called Atlas. Atlas was with Professor Efrat Tseelon from WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA in contemporary Australian art a Titan that made the mistake of Leeds University; she publishes practice, and in the formation siding with his brother Cronus in a regularly in academic journals, of identity. Burton’s artistic war against Zeus. In punishment, exhibiting throughout Australia practice has a strong research he was compelled to support the and internationally. Dr. Burton base, from which the subjective weight of the heavens by means showed her work titled Taking

MYTHOPOETIC: and objective gazes inherent of a pillar on his shoulders. Atlas Atlas (2012), in Re-Picturing in the (same) popular cultures, is classically depicted throughout the Feminine, Gallery OED, a are manoeuvred in work that art history holding the world on collateral exhibition to the deconstructs, parodies, and his shoulders in Taking Atlas inaugural Indian Biennale of reclaims. Through this theoretical (Stealth) Burton transforms the Contemporary art, Kochi Muziris base, Burton manages a Atlas metaphor to represent Biennale Open (2012). Dr. Laini subjective representation of the modern women, who carry the Burton is a lecturer in Fine Art & female body in her artwork, which weight and responsibility of their Art Theory at Queensland College defies genre codes and instead worlds. Burton has depicted of Art, Griffith University. reflects the complex and hybrid this concept through a body in reality of twenty-first-century 1. Laini Burton, correspondance with metamorphosis. The swelling women and the changing social the author, 29 March 2013. body, perhaps pregnant, isolates structures of family and domestic a characteristic of a changing life in Australian and global twenty-first-century culture, in culture. This is exemplified in the which being a woman specifically work titled Taking Atlas (Stealth) means being responsible, that (2013); Laini Burton explains the condition of female-hood her concept in the following is identified with a weight of statement, responsibility and the pressure Mythological Atlas had the to “have it all”; bearing financial arduous task of holding obligations, the desires for a up the celestial spheres rewarding career and family life 17

Laini Burton Taking Atlas (Stealth) 2013, diptych: pencil, ink and gouache on paper. Image courtesy of the artist. Photographer: Carl Warner. MARNIE DEAN SACRED FEMININE—“GRRRL” MYTHOLOGIES

18 Marnie Dean is an Australian The work titled Morrigan-Kali: the a relevatory text that foretells a new media artist with a practice ‘she-wolf”: Wave of the Future, bright future where a coming that combines drawing, digital was inspired by an exhibition that matriarch/heroine called the imaging, painting, sculpture, Dean frequented when she was ‘she-Wolf” would redeem women animation and installation. living in Los Angeles, mounted collectively and raise their status Dean has lived in India and the at the Getty Center titled In all over the world. Dean began United States. Her practice the Beginning Was the Word: to illustrate this imagined text in reflects her trans-cultural life, Medieval Gospel Illuminations a work that replicates stained interests in feminism and early (2010–11). At the time, Dean was glass and appropriates the genre participation in the counter- also re-reading Hélène Cixous’s codes of medieval illuminated movement known as “Riot “The Laughter of the Medusa” manuscripts, renaissance Grrrl”. The Riot Grrrl movement in which the author proclaims painting and popular cultures embraced feminist theories the virtues of women writing for with symbology, borrowed regarding digital aesthetics and women: by the literary voice of Sylvia cyborgs, with many female Plath. Plath’s is a distinctive I shall speak about women’s hackers, bloggers, animators and poetic female voice that is writing: about what it will do. and digital artists engaging with as impassioned as any gospel, Woman must write her self: WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA its “grrrl” rhetoric. Evolving from loaded with intense imagery, the must write about women this earlier position, Dean’s work kind of voice Dean imagined in and bring women to writing, appropriates aesthetically from response to Cixous. In particular, from which they have been popular culture forms such Dean depicts Plath’s image of driven away as violently as as anime, advertising, music the Medusa as a Jellyfish, as from their bodies—for the

MYTHOPOETIC: and fashion, with a developing a protagonist in her illustrated same reasons, by the same visual language that is distinctly women’s volume, Sibylle law, with the same fatal goal. digital and highly saturated. Her Baumbach explains, “Plath not Woman must put herself into early work explored feminine only points to the transition of the text—as into the world representation and identity in this figure from the verbal and and into history—by her own digital ontologies via her avatar, visual into the aural sphere, but movement.1 a character called “Dollygrrrrl”. conceives the encounter with Her current practice continues Dean combines the aesthetics the Gorgon as both a traumatic to explore female imagery in the exhibition with Cixous’s encounter and the overcoming recontextualising feminine figures imploration and instead of the thereof”.3 In Dean’s work, Medusa from her own Druid/Pagan British Christian bible, she imagines a is taken from the oral sphere and Irish heritage, with qualities fantastical gospel, with a feminine into the written and translated appropriated through her study voice and lore that combines into a visual image with a new of Tantra (Tibetan Buddhist the knowledge of the ancient context, she represents the and Hindu), creating work that Celtic Goddess the Morrigan ability of women to transfigure reconciles the polarities in the (a Goddess of destruction that, and transform their own images prevailing stereotypes regarding through the ideas of art historian collectively, writing their bodies Western women: such as the Thomas McEvilley and author and the sacredness of their sacred and profane, the virgin Joseph Campbell, can be traced sexuality back into history and and the whore, attempting to via Greco-Roman mythology to into a contemporary episteme. imbue female sexuality with Hindu Kali2) with that of the Hindu Dean uses the figure of the spirituality. Goddess Kali. Dean envisioned She-Wolf, and connects her to 19

Marnie Dean Morrigan-Kali the ‘SHE-WOLF’: Wave of the Future 2012, lightbox illumination, digital print on transparency, customised display. Collection: Mr Binoj Cheruvathur Kochurry, India. Image courtesy of the artist.

Medusa in the work, as Kelly Cochin, a collateral venue of the McEvilley’s research. See McEvilley, The Oliver explains “the she-wolf is Kochi Muziris Biennale (as part of Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Ancient Greek and Indian neither the real wolf nor its mask, the Australian Consulate of India’s Philosophies (New York: Allworth Press, but rather the she-wolf is a figure OZFEST initiative), with twenty- 2002). Author Joseph Campbell explores for dangerous female sexuality one of the world’s emerging the common meanings in myth and mythic figures in separate cultures, and and fecundity”. Creating this new and leading contemporary their relevance today; he believed the relationship, Dean reconfigures artists. Dean is the curator of religions of the world to be the various, both archetypal forms to Mythopoetic: Women Artists from culturally influenced “masks” of the same transcendent truths. See Joseph represent the sacredness of Australia and India. Campbell with Bill Moyers, The Power of women’s sexuality and creativity. 1. Hélène Cixous, “The Laughter of the Myth, ed. Betty Sue Smith (New York: The artist presents a subjective Medusa,” trans. Keith Cohen and Paul Anchor Books, 1988). and empowered rendition of Cohen, Signs 1, no. 4 (Summer 1976): 3. Sibylle Baumback, “Medusa’s Gaze and women’s sexuality in her imagined 875. the Aesthetics of Fascination,” Anglia- Zeitschrift für englische Philologie 128, illuminated feminine volume. 2. Art historian Thomas McEvilley, in his book The Shape of Ancient no. 2 (2010): 238. Marnie Dean has explored her Thought, explores the foundations of Western civilisation and argues that emerging curatorial practice in today’s Western mainstream must be an exhibition titled Re-Picturing considered the product of both Greek the Feminine: New and Hybrid and Indian thought. He shows how trade, mythology, imperialism and Realities in the Artworld—A migration allowed cultural philosophies Survey of Indian and Australian to intermingle freely throughout India, Contemporary Female Artists, Egypt, Greece, and the ancient Near commissioned by Gallery OED, East. This book spans thirty years of SIMONE EISLER ANIMALIA—CHIMERIC MYTHOLOGIES

20 Simone Eisler is a Brisbane which celebrates death as and cute—simultaneously based artist who works a new beginning and as a pantheistic and post- internationally and nationally. transformative process. Only apocalyptic.2 Her creative practice has natural materials are used to Simone Eisler’s Field evokes emerged from an early focus on create the installation, some imagery of what might have sculpture to include installation, materials once belonged to been a “remote colonialist photography, performance, living organisms that have perception” of “Terra Australis,” drawing and painting in work died, and these have been but is grounded in the complexity that is meticulously and skillfully hybridised to create new of multi-cultural Australia. Her developed to combine elements entities, symbolic of new life Field re-creates a fantastical from the natural world with and metamorphosis. landscape imbued with the technology. Eisler carefully The horned entities in Field are atmosphere and dark other- fashions her imaginal worlds enlivened through movement worldliness of her ancestral that may be constructed with and the artist’s command Transylvania (in Romania) and sculptural objects and multimedia of her natural mediums. Art the Black Forest (Germany), installation, through which, the Monthly Australia editor Maurice with materials belonging to the artist engages in performative O’Riordan says that, for Eisler, eco-culture and landscape of WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA gestures that she documents, the “elongated arc of the animal Australia. Upon entering the producing rich and atmospheric horn is like a phallus”, which in space, the viewer is presented photographic series. Eisler’s Field accentuates and extends with a beach-like scene, with practice is fluid and inclusive and the possibilities of both the a natural palette that appears founded on her expertise as a human and the animal, by mixing to transcend into the gallery

MYTHOPOETIC: sculptress, her work resonates their qualities, both physical walls. The foreground of the with liminality, inhabiting and instinctual.1 The work uses installation is inhabited by a series strange yet familiar spaces “in- the ancient mythological figure of gleaning horned creatures, between”, that portray physical of the chimera, as a metaphor beautifully worked objects that transformation, evolution and for the development of modern are mysteriously submerged biodiversity. biotechnologies; ancient vision in mineral ilmenite sand. The The work in the exhibition in the twenty-first century has creatures are both ancient and Mythopoetic: Women artists become a modern reality. Eisler futuristic, ostensibly in possession from Australia and India, is brings this reality into a marvelous of another knowledge or wisdom, titled Field (2007) and is from a focus, literally and symbolically. so fundamentally different from larger installational suite titled The term “anima”, references both humankind, yet driven by the Anima Requiem (2007). Field animals and the Jungian notion same instincts and desires; is an example of Eisler’s poetic of anima/animus, wherein the they might, imaginatively, thrive imagination, representing a anima is the female within the in any Grimm’s Brother’s tale. “physical” collective of chimeras, male psyche, sometimes shown Eisler creates a world with an that accentuate the instinctual as a woman in a man’s dream, “irrevocation of an ever-evolving character and libidinal drives of a signifier of the unmistakable humanity,” in her own unique human nature. Eisler describes sexual aspect of the work. Eisler’s mythology with surrealistic the work stating, pseudo-sexual mythology is, juxtapositions that combine binary elements such as male and The installation Field from Childlike, ritualesque, equally female, nature with technology the larger Anima Requiem conversant with what’s and involuntary with voluntary is a rebirth/funerary garden, frightening, endearing drives.3 Field is an enigmatic 21

Simone Eisler Field 2007, ilmenite and cow horn. Image courtesy, Spiro Grace Art Rooms, Brisbane, and Gallerysmith, Melbourne. Photographer: Mick Richards.

hybridisation of symbolic forms, 1. See Maurice O’Riordan’s article on with a surreal visual language, Simone Eisler, “Garden of Earthly Shadows,” Photofile issue 90 (2011): that manipulates the familial 8–10. associations with certain objects 2. Carol Schwarzman, “Dealing With the and recontextualises these, Past,” Artlink 30, no. 3 (2010): 44–47. allowing the viewer access into 3. O’Riordan, “Garden of Earthly Shadows”. another world. Simone Eisler participated in Re-Picturing the Feminine, Gallery OED, a collateral exhibition for the Kochi Muziris Biennale Open (2012) and Arc Biennial of Art, Brisbane (2009). Her international residencies include the Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, Artist-in-residence (2008), PAF Artist-in-residence, St Erme, France (2007). Eisler has mounted many solo exhibitions and public art works, completing commissions all over the world. FIONA HALL MATERIALITY—RE-ORDERING TAXONOMIES

22 Fiona Hall is one of Australia’s open cans with sprouting constructs the skull motifs from most renowned contemporary botanically precise sculptural dollar bills in a process that artists. Her early practice plants with high relief exposes the dominant economic was photographically based tableaux of erotic vignettes. culture—American consumerist and has evolved to include Below is written the botanical capitalism—and re-orders the installation, painting, sculpture, classification in the best epistemic connection between public gardens and video. The tradition of Carl Linnaeus. that economy, historical and materiality of Hall’s work is an It is this incongruous cultural associations, popular essential aspect of her practice, juxtaposition of the different culture and the environment (as that mimics, exposes and systems of classification the twenty-first-century man’s reinforces the rhetoric and ideas and visualisation that gives impact on the planet). The work is she engages with. As Kate these objects their particular a hybrid metaphor formulating new Davidson writes: and potent impact. Meaning symbolic language. resides not in any one Hall sets up antitheses and Fiona Hall lives and works in particular system, but in the combines incongruous Adelaide, South Australia. She seams created through the elements: traditional and has had an extensive connection clash of systems.2 topical, literary and popular to contemporary practice in India, WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA culture, conventional craft Hall makes use of taxonomic having previously collaborated practices and mass- re-structuring in diverse ways with renowned Indian artist Nalini produced objects.1 in a practice that explores Malani in an artist book titled consumerism, globalisation, and Global Liquidity & 23 images of Hall develops unique colonialism in large bodies of the Avon Lady (1998), which was

MYTHOPOETIC: methodologies to interlock with work that visualise the impact of featured in the exhibition Global unfamiliar mediums that reveal her such phenomena on the planet. Liquidity in 1998 at the Roslyn immeasurable skill and patience In the work titled 21st Century Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney, Australia. in processes that are often labor Man (2011), Hall combines the Hall has participated in many intensive, producing intricate iconic symbols of American international Biennales, including detail. currency with the image of the Documenta 13 (2012) and the Hall’s mythologising occurs skull, in a menacing rendition 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010). through her visual re-ordering of a current humanity and its Major retrospectives of Hall’s work of taxonomies that reconfigure economies’ negative impact. The Big Game Hunting, have been traditional archetypes to skull motif is loaded with symbolic mounted by Heide Museum of include cultural anomalies and association in many cultures that Modern Art, Melbourne; Museum some of the harsh realities of may be interpreted in the work, of Contemporary Art, Sydney, contemporary life. Describing however, universally the skull and the Queensland Art Gallery, Hall’s use of sardine cans in her signifies death. An encroaching Brisbane. work of the early 1990s, Sasha danger is hinted at, portending 1. Kate Davidson, “The Art of Fiona Hall,” Art Grishin provides a good example the inevitable and imminent and Australia 43, no.1 (2005): 14–15. of Hall’s taxonomic restructuring: destruction of humankind. Hall 2. Sasha Grishin, “Fiona Hall,” Australian creates a direct relationship Art Review, 9 July 2005, accessed 3 The ubiquitous erotic sardine between money, man and death, March 2013, http://artreview.com.au/ contents/873050955-fiona-hall. cans, through which the artist which we may interpret as “greed gained a popular notoriety that kills” or “destruction from in the early 1990s, present capitalism”. Hall meticulously 23

Fiona Hall 21st Century Man 2011, US dollars, unique work from a series of 25. Image courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney. PAT HOFFIE HUMAN RIGHTS—ECONOMIC VISUAL CULTURE

24 Pat Hoffie was born in Scotland something more complex and with images that emphasise and arrived in Australia at the generative, and demonstrates local economic revenue streams, age of four. Her creative practice how the local can make its surrounded by communist has evolved from a foundation mark on global frameworks.1 symbols and paraphernalia from in painting to include sculpture, This particular aspect of her political campaigning. Through installation, performance and career culminated in 2006 in an the hybridisation of aesthetic video. Hoffie spent extended exhibition and book titled Fully references, Hoffie develops a periods of time travelling Exploited Labour, produced in new visual language. The visual in Afghanistan and through collaboration with the University language expresses the impact Central and South Asia, an early of Queensland’s Art Museum. of globalisation on economies influence on what became an of women artisans in India. Hoffie’s work titled Ideology international career with multiple The symbolism and syntax is and Artefact #2 (2012) is the links to and within the Asia multi-layered, tracing economic product of a collaboration Pacific region. Hoffie is a pioneer systems and the network of with fellow artist Veronica of feminist art in Australia and economic infrastructure that Sepulveda, who assisted Hoffie an advocate promoting human influences the lives of women in physically making the work; rights through visual culture artisans practicing various both artists were set up in Hoffie’s WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA internationally. Her practice traditional craft forms. studio, stitching, cutting, and engages with mythological and constructing in an atmosphere Dr. Pat Hoffie regularly contributes cultural content via the methods convivial for “women’s craft”. to critical theory and visual of production employed to create Craft remains an aesthetic arts debates within Australia in her work. Specifically, Hoffie has reference in the installation, a platforms that have included the

MYTHOPOETIC: developed creative strategies that vernacular recognisable in Biennale of Sydney, Perspecta expose the economic structures Hoffie’s wider oeuvre. The work and the Asia-Pacific Triennial, for that support the exploitative reflects the current status of which she has participated as a nature of poverty in a globalised women in Kerala in India, where curator. She is a Professor of Art, economy; in the process Hoffie participated in a collateral Queensland College of Art, Griffith establishing new networks of exhibition to the inaugural Kochi University, heads the research signification that deconstruct Muziris Biennale in 2012. Hoffie focus group SECAP (Sustainable cultural stereotypes with new plays with visual metaphors Environment through Culture, visual outcomes, creating new and symbols that borrow from Asia Pacific), and was appointed visual culture. She has employed Kerala’s communist history, UNESCO Orbicom Chair in artisans in the Philippines and referencing the aesthetic influence Communications by Griffith other areas of the Asia Pacific on communist visualities derived University. to work on projects—often with from Russian Constructivism a human rights agenda—that 1. See Sally Butler, “Pat Hoffie: Cultural together with visual syntax from render the inequities of the global Servitude,” Artlink 27, no. 2 (2007). the local language of Kerala economic systems transparent, called Malayalam, in bold red and that also highlight the embroidered script and toys used inequities of the ascription of in the marketing of McDonald’s. value given to various forms of The work heavily appropriates the cultural production, mandated visual appearance of the pop- by a globalised art market. In culture landscape of local villages her art the inevitability of cultural in Kerala, where advertising for servitude to capital flowers into capitalist ventures are interlaced 25

Pat Hoffie (in collaboration with Veronica Sepulveda) Ideology and Artefact #2 2012, silk, plastic, cardboard, Fimo. Image courtesy of the artist. Photographer: Carl Warner. SONIA KHURANA THE BODY IN SPACE—NEW SYMBOLIC ORDER

26 Sonia Khurana explores the inherent in popular culture, to have pursued the tropes of the politics of selfhood and space provide the viewer with access to flâneur and the tramp, I am through the medium of her a perspective that is peripheral, more attracted towards the body, in a practice that has portraying different instances abject”.3 According to Nancy (according to feminist readings from contemporary life. Her Adajania, “Khurana performs of her work) redefined gendered work re-positions the viewer’s dispossessed figures who enact representations of the feminine gaze, through the association their private lives in the glare of in India. After early forays in of humour and facile, everyday public appearance as an attempt painting, she extended her occurrences, from resistance to rupture the textures of the practice into other mediums. to empathy. The disruptions everyday.”4 Her video performance titled she causes deconstruct In Flower Carrier III (2006), Bird (1999) established Khurana signs and codes in the visual Khurana wanders the streets internationally as an important mainstream, from which new of Barcelona, Spain, with her emerging contemporary Indian archetypal expressions emerge. attention focused on a single artist. In the years that have Explicitly, in Western theoretical flower, with the sole purpose followed, Khurana has continued interpretations, Khurana of her character’s existence to develop an interdisciplinary communicates the experience attached to the flower. An excerpt WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA practice that incorporates of modern Indian women and from the novel Immortality by mediums including performance, with increasing emphasis, an Milan Kundera inspired the three video, photography, text, drawing, internationalist, even nomadic works in Khurana’s Flower Carrier and installation. position, exploring “transcultural series. The text touchingly relates, transactions within the global”.2 Through her sensitive and

MYTHOPOETIC: She said to herself: when inquiring work, Khurana has Khurana has selected once the onslaught of created myriad representations of three works to be shown in ugliness became completely women that, indirectly, reference Mythopoetic, which survey the unbearable, she would go an internal knowledge of self, collective impact of her practice, to a florist and buy a forget- but privilege universally abject via the individual example of each me-not, a single forget-me- feminine experience. Geeta Kapur work. The works belong to a not, a slender stalk with describes this dynamic in her wider period in her oeuvre, which miniature blue flowers. She early practice, suggesting, explore the notion of “embodying would go out into the streets spaces”. In all three works, Flower Sonia Khurana is part of the holding the flower before her Carrier III (2006), the Logic of lineage of women working eyes, staring at it tenaciously, Birds (2006) and Lying-down- through the body into a so as to see only that single on-the-ground: Additional Notes space of erotic efflorescence beautiful point, to see it as (2009), Khurana’s exploration of recognised/shown to be the last thing she wanted her body in space is imperative (almost definitely) blocked, to preserve for herself from to the re-positioning of feminine thwarted, problematised, a world she had ceased to representation. The artist and therefore won, if ever, love, she would walk like chooses characters that have by searing forms of self- that through the streets, a stereotypically, marginalised exposure.1 she would soon become a relationship with societal space; familiar sight, children would From this position, Khurana she explains, “both in Flower run after her, laugh at her, deconstructs symbolic orders Carrier and in Logic of Birds, I throw things at her, and all 27

Sonia Khurana Flower Carrier III 2006 (video still), single-channel video, 10 min (looped). Image courtesy of the artist.

would call her: the crazy in the sociological landscape, but carrier, so that the viewer has woman with the forget-me- her gaze is focused on a ginger fundamental access to “their” not.5 flower, rather than the forget-me- world. not. The dynamic re-positioning With a tenderness befitting Logic of Birds and Lying-down- of the body in space forces the text, Khurana assumes a on-the-ground: Additional Notes a denial of the stereotypical form of the flâneur in response similarly re-position (literally associations of the flâneur type. to Kundera; she shifts the and textually) the artist’s body Instead of “not belonging,” focus of the flâneur’s gaze and in space, altering symbolic Khurana’s flower carrier belongs gives the figure new symbolic order in visual culture. The to her own beautiful existence, meaning. Traditionally the flâneur artist commands the right to that is physically immortalised is interested in the social space have space by choosing to lie by the flower in her hand. The of the metropolis. Not only does down, claiming, possessing work is a hybrid of both video the flâneur gaze starry-eyed at and inhabiting, etc. Through and performance with a visual space, but also the ‘sensational this action, Khurana offers an language that appropriates from phenomenon’ of space; a alternative to the “verticality of the aesthetics of reality television fundamental experience of the the male totem” and occupies a combining with a sense of the flâneur.”6 The figure in Khurana’s horizontal paradigm. Her body everyday. All these aspects in Flower Carrier III moves through enmeshes with the space in Logic Flower Carrier III combine to the streets of the Spanish of Birds shifting our perceptions re-locate the viewer’s gaze to metropolis, her body participates of the vagrant or tramp archetype be “with” the artist/flâneur/flower to an understanding of the “artist 28

Sonia Khurana Logic of Birds 2006 (video still), single-channel video, 2 min (looped).

WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA Image courtesy of the artist. MYTHOPOETIC: as landscape”. We view the claiming and reparitive gesture. staged during the international figure with the “logic of birds” in a The fact that Khurana has “lain theatre festival, Bharat Rang gendered space that is integrative down” all over the world, in Mahotsav in Delhi, 2012. The and inclusive. Khurana describes her performance practice and Lying Down series have been this portrayal of her body in video works, provides the performed in cities ranging from explaining, viewer with access to a nomadic Barcelona, Nottingham and archetypal figure, with borderless Paris to Hyderabad, Delhi, and I strive to do this in an freedom in a globalised world. Aichi, Japan, where Khurana has oblique manner; my way engaged hundreds of participants of subverting female The text-based Lying-Down-on- in performative ventures. corporeality would be to the-Ground: Additional Notes show the body as something is a part of an ongoing project Khurana was educated in Delhi that is extended in space and that has a live art component University’s College of Art and persists through time, both that Khurana has been engaged in London at the Royal College phenomenologically and with for several years, in which of Art, and undertook artistic politically.7 public participants enter into research at the Rijksakademie shared space to “lie down” with from 2002 to 2004. Khurana lives To lie down is to expose and the artist. Lying Down on the and works in Delhi, she has been make vulnerable, however for Ground (Version IV), the most included in many international Khurana this is also an act of recent live art performance in exhibitions including Re-Picturing sovereignty and so perversely, Khurana’s Lying Down series was the Feminine, Gallery OED, a “lying down” is a powerful, re- 29

collateral exhibition to the Kochi 1. Geeta Kapur, “Gender Mobility: Through Muziris Biennale Open (2012), the Lens of Five Women Artists in India,” in Global Feminisms, ex. cat., ed. Maura Elles at Pompidou (2009–11), Reilly and Linda Nochlin (New York: the Aichi Triennale Japan (2010), Brooklyn Museum and Merrell, 2007), West Heavens, Shanghai (2010), 91. Global Feminisms curated by 2. Ibid., 93. Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin, 3. Sonia Khurana, correspondence with the Brooklyn Museum (2007–2008), author, 6 April 2013. Horn Please, KunsmuseumBerne 4. Nancy Adajania, “Q and A with Sonia Khurana,” India Moderna, ex. cat. (2007), Edge of Desire: Recent (Valencia: IVAM, 2009). Art in India, curated by Chaitanya 5. Khurana refers to Milan Kundera’s novel Sambrani at the Art Gallery of Immortality, rev. ed. (Toronto: Faber and Western Australia (2004–5), the Faber, 2000). Pusan Biennale (2004). Sonia 6. See Walter Benjamin’s Gessamelte Khurana’s Bird video (1999) was Schriften, trans. and ed. Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard previously shown at the IMA University Press, 1996), 326. in Brisbane, Australia in July 7. Sonia Khurana, correspondence with the 2002, in an exhibition curated author, 6 April 2013. by Johan Pijnappel titled Self: Contemporary Indian Video Art. PUSHPAMALA N. MIMICRY—RE-TELLING THE TALE

30 Pushpamala N. is one of India’s society and internationally, which gaze of an admiring Surpanakha, most prominent artists; she lives through typing and classifying, that later shifts subtly to a violent, and works in Bangalore and Delhi result in marginalising people. staccato spectacle. in India. Her practice comprises In the work titled Indrajaala/ The artist inhabits the “physical” photography, video, performance, Seduction from the series Avega: form of the Surpanakha trope, sculpture and installations, The Passion (2012), Pushpamala with mesmerising gestures exploring issues of representation N. re-contextualises the female she sways in a display that and identity in visualities that villain “Surpanakha” from the engenders the desires of various document her own body in Indian epic the Ramayana. In the masculinised gazes. However, an array of roles, personas, video the demon Surpanakha Pushpamala N. does not revisit characters and avatars in staged takes human form and tries to these positions, she subsumes and constructed environments. seduce the hero “Lakshmana”, the masculinised because, Curator and theorist Geeta who spurns her sexual advances Kapur has described her practice She undermines the sign (the and decides to punish her, as that of a “masquerading female figure Surpanakha) as disfiguring her by cutting off her artist.”1 Pushpamala N. has linguistically structured within nose and ears. The artist as the a creative practice with an the phallocentric/identitarian/ demon mimics the movements WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA inherent performance base, aggrandised domain of the of a shaman from the fragment employing imitation and mimicry symbolic; she also therefore, of an early ethnographic film in tableaux constructed with undermines the (perverse) seen in Melbourne, Australia. sophisticated visual language logic of the “feminine as This performance provides a appropriated from pop-culture masquerade”, based historic context for the character,

MYTHOPOETIC: traditions. Through her vernacular, as that is on a fetishistic which is presented in guises Ajay Sinha explains, “the artist displacement of the phallus.3 that simultaneously reflect a conveys a fascination with colonial and postcolonial gaze images and image genres that By subsuming the masculinised through which the demon’s have a readable presence in desire/object dynamic and identity varies. From this the visual culture of modern transitioning the character reference point, Pushpamala N. India.”2 In particular, Pushpamala Surpanakha into a violent interlaces the black and white N. has used her practice to atmosphere, juxtaposed aesthetics of early ethnographic explore the idea of “the artist with Surpanakha’s dreamy film, with cinematic image flows as ethnographer,” in a process surrendering to her fate, that appropriate from the “trick that provides a telling account Pushpamala N. exposes the photography” of early Indian of the impact of colonialism and character’s vulnerability and cinema (Dadasaheb Phalke) and nationalism and Pushpamala N.’s restores a lost innocence even from the aesthetics of video own position in postcolonial India related to her sexuality, prefaced games. There are budget-looking or more accurately, what the artist earlier in the work. Through “magical flame effects”, used to refers to as the “postnational” her employment of subtle and denote Surpanakha’s transition position. Through her focus on multi-layered visual language, to and from physical form. In the ethnography, Pushpamala N. Pushpamala N. imbues the central screen in the video, the challenges the authenticity of the character Surpanakha with character Lakshmana shows off photographic image, exposing complexity, reincarnating her into his swordsmanship in an overt roles and prejudices in Indian a new life and different mythology. display, beheld by the suggested Pushpamala is hybridising and 31

Pushpamala N. Indrajaala/Seduction 2012 (video still), from the series Avega—The Passion: The Drama of Three Women, single-channel digital video, 4:27 min (looped). Image courtesy of the artist and Nature Morte, New Delhi.

transforming archetypes like the at Gallery OED, a collateral 1. Geeta Kapur, “Dismantling Norms: “Native South Indian woman”, exhibition to the Kochi Muziris Apropos an Indian/Asian Avante Garde,” in When Was Modernism: Essays on the “Magician”, the “Warrior”, the Biennale Open (2012), Photo Contemporary Cultural Practice in India “shaman”, the “Femme Fatale”, Espana, Madrid (2012), Paris- (New Delhi: Tulika, 2000), 399. the “Noble Savage” and the Delhi-Bombay, Centre Pompidou 2. Ajay Sinha, “Modernism in India: A Short “Whore”, altering the historical and (2011), Beyond the Self, National History of a Blush,” The Art Bulletin 90, popular symbolism assigned to Portrait Gallery-Australia (2011), no. 4 (December 2008), 565. the infamous villain Surpanakha Chalo India, Mori Museum (2008), 3. Kapur, “Gender Mobility: Through the Lens of Five Women Artists in India,” in and accomplishing a re-telling of Century City, at the Tate Modern Global Feminisms, ex. cat., ed. Maura the Ramayana from a distinctly (2001) and the Johannesberg Reilly and Linda Nochlin (New York: feminine perspective. Biennale (1995). Her short film Brooklyn Museum and Merrell, 2007), 86. Rashtriy Kheer and Desiy Salad Pushpamala N. studied sculpture was showcased in an event titled at the MS University in Baroda, Griffith Asia Institute-Perspectives India. Since the mid 1990s the Asia with Pushpamala N. for primary focus of her practice Griffith University in 2010. has been photo performance and video. Pushpamala’s work has been shown widely in international exhibitions including Re-Picturing the Feminine, ANN-MAREE REANEY And JILL KINNEAR COLLABORATION—TRAVELLING MYTHOLOGIES

32 Ann-Maree Reaney and Jill the lens and the window. of an ongoing collaboration and Kinnear have collaborated The very act of pointing the series by Reaney and Kinnear, on a series of works about camera in order to capture who have both individually had travelling mythologies inspired “authenticity” is contradictory; extensive careers. by the tradition of the roadtrip as the image becomes a fiction, Jill Kinnear is a prominent textile presented in cinema and popular a souvenir, a distortion of artist; born in Scotland, she culture. The artwork combines memory removed from the immigrated to Australia. She has literary and visual references and reality of the scene.1 completed major commissions intersects with the women’s own The work in Mythopoetic titled and her work is held in several documentation of their travels. Road Trip India—An Act of Faith international public collections. The collaboration has produced (2013), invites the viewer to an Kinnear is a fellow of the Design a unique visual language that encounter with a visual space Institute of Australia; she currently appropriates from the locations created from the experiences and holds the position of Professor the artists have travelled to, and memories of an Indian roadtrip. of Fibers at Savannah College of finds central focus through the The central figure in the work, Art and Design in Georgia, USA. construction of an exquisite wearing a dress emblazoned with Ann-Maree Reaney exhibits her garment, which is photographed the trucks the artists encountered work nationally and internationally, WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA on a model and placed in virtual on their journey, ‘stands before she has been conferred with environments generated by the a theatre-like curtain of the numerous visual arts awards artists. The artists have provided same design, presenting the internationally, nationally and at this statement explaining the environment—and therefore the state level including the DAAD work, the notion of the journey—as German government scholarship MYTHOPOETIC: Cinema and the road trip are an imaginative and fictional to undertake research in Berlin inextricably bound together representation”.2 The imagery and several artist-in-residencies by movement, speed and is constructed from the artists’ in Paris and China through the mobility. Both the car and travel video and photographs; Visual Arts Crafts Board of the the camera are mobile, can mediated forms of documentation Australia Council. She was a be pointed in almost any that focus not only on the Senior Lecturer in Sculpture direction, operate at speed; decoration of the truck, but and Head of the Visual Arts video frames one tenth also the symbolic disregard for Department at the University of a second documented the rules of the road, by those of Southern Queensland; she our journey. Both cinema operating the vehicles. The artists currently works as both a visual and the road trip represent continue to describe the trucks artist and curator. fictional spaces, a space explaining, “with cabins adorned 1. Ann-Maree Reaney and Jill Kinnear, of encapsulated possibility, as temple shrines with flowers, correspondence with the author, 27 paradoxically infinite yet they are an icon that transgresses December 2012. compressed and defined all highway lines and rules with— 2. Reaney and Kinnear, correspondence by time. Both are frames but an act of faith”.3 The work with the author, 10 April 2013. upon the world, and the depicts the artists” fascination 3. Reaney and Kinnear, ibid, 3 April 2013. video image, taken through with the parallel and cross- the windscreen of a moving cultural references encompassed car, is twice separated from by “faith” and travelling. Road reality, through the filters of Trip India—An Act of Faith is part 33

Ann-Maree Reaney and Jill Kinnear, Road Trip India—An Act of Faith 2013, tripdych: digital prints on paper. Image courtesy of the artists. MANDY RIDLEY SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE—PATTERN & CULTURE

34 Mandy Ridley is an artist being awarded a Fellowship to and limbic resonance, in an with a history of exploring attend the Hamad bin Khalifa installation constructed with the intersections between Symposium on Islamic Art vinyl that has a palette derived cultures, within an Australian in Doha, Qatar in 2011. The from the topography of both milieu. Her practice is process work in Mythopoetic, titled the Spanish and Australian oriented, often beginning with Sometimes I Feel My Heart Will terrains, merging botanic and drawing and extending, through Burst (2012), is an example of symbolic references in personal her engagement with various Ridley’s explorations into the motif. This motif is a unique and material-based methodologies, impact of culture and place decorative pattern that takes into installation and public on her corporeal memory. The on its own topography, through art. Over her long career, installation was produced in repetition and layering, cleverly Ridley has developed a strong Australia in 2012 from preliminary re-constructing the landscape visual language; constructed work Ridley undertook during resonating in her emotional and through her appropriation of her Spanish residency several physical memory. patterns, symbols and motifs, years earlier. Through the work, Mandy Ridley has exhibited in a cultural convergence that Ridley constructs a landscape her work internationally in the represents Ridley’s own unique inspired both by memories of Kindness/Udarta: Australia-India WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA mythology. Ridley’s mythology her childhood home, and her Cultural Exchange at the Habitat is a conglomeration of visual experience of travelling along the Centre, Delhi and RMIT Gallery in hybridity, portrayed from a road to Madinat al-Zahra, the Melbourne (2012) and in the Re- position of personal encounter ruined palatine complex, near the picturing the Feminine exhibition with the “other,” in which pattern city of Córdoba, Spain. Ridley at Gallery OED, a collateral

MYTHOPOETIC: becomes the primary visual explains, exhibition of the Kochi Muziris source to communicate place I travelled 5km out of town Biennale, also in 2012. Her work and identity in symbolic visual on a local bus, alighting with is held in private and public language. Ridley explains, “I three other travelers who collections including Artbank, travel/ travail: incorporating were visiting from Madrid. Griffith University Art Collection, memories, sensations and “Yes, follow us”, and we the Gold Coast City Art Gallery, encounters into my personal set off in single file along a and the Museum of Brisbane. archive”. Creating a work allows dusty country road heading Ridley specialises in public art a process of translation to towards gently rolling hills. practice, and has successfully occur, rendering a richly layered I experienced what I can completed many commissions record of an idiosyncratic lived only call a “body shock” of nationally. experience.”1 Ridley’s translations recognition, at the eerily are comprised of symbolisms 1. Mandy Ridley, correspondence with the familiar topography and feel weaving a visual array, depicting author, 3 April 2013. of the landscape, it was just the impact of cultures on 2. Mandy Ridley, artist statement, from as though I was trudging the exhibition Cognition at Gippsland her person, and recording along the road towards my Art Gallery, Sale, Victoria, 30 November the transformations and rich 2012–27 January 2013. family farm in Gippsland! 2 associations that she experiences. Ridley’s artwork attempts to Ridley has undertaken extended articulate the strange moment residencies in India and Spain. she describes, representing a Initial research into Islamic Art jolting confluence of memory in these regions, led to her 35

Mandy Ridley Sometimes I Feel My Heart Will Burst 2012, hand-cut digital print, LED lights. Image courtesy of the artist and Gippsland Art Gallery. Photographer: Lindsay Roberts. SANGEETA SANDRASEGAR HYBRIDITY—MEDUSA METAPHOR

36 Sangeeta Sandrasegar is a areas of cultural difference and Sandrasegar describes her prominent Australian artist who convergence, a recent example version of the Medusa story, has exhibited widely nationally exploring the shared postcolonial stating, and internationally. She has histories shaping the formation Medusa is cast outside the a practice that investigates of her own and contemporary legal canon of women by the cross-cultural identity and identity in Australia and India. dominant yet barren warrior meaning, through the intersection The work titled The scaffold figurehead Athena (after of literature, myth and visual called the Motherland spews being raped by Poseidon histories, with a whimsical and infinite grace, was completed in one of Athena’s temples). sometimes sharp-satire that in Mysore, India in 2012, using Sentenced to isolation on reflects the strong research base the traditional medium of Indian a stony island outcrop and informing her work. Sandrasegar brass. The scaffolding the title with her once lustrous hair explores issues connected with refers to, are actualised as turned to snakes, the Gorgon hybridity, race, immigration, bronze casts of eucalyptus trees Medusa’s will to beauty and gender, sexuality, postcolonialism used for construction in India. to make life (thus to also and belonging, with visual Eucalypt forests were introduced take it away) is imbued in her language that borrows from her to the Indian landscape through power to turn men to stone. WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA own Indian, Malay and Australian colonial rule, and so the brass When eventually beheaded heritage. Her depictions of the “objects embody the processes by Perseus, even in death female figure (sometimes her of transferral and translation that Medusa gives life: from her own) challenge fixed notions are implicit to globalisation and neck springs forth the fully about identity and present to intercultural exchange”.2 formed giant Chrysaor, and

MYTHOPOETIC: the viewer, fluid interpretations, The title of Sandrasegar’s work in from her blood the winged grounded in constant flux and Mythopoetic is a reverie—taken Pegasus.3 hybrid states, in a personal from a literary source, a line milieu that plays with objective/ In the artist’s view Medusa is in a poem by Ovid about the subjective interpretation. Within creatrix, and represents the mythological “Perseus”. It is these parameters, Sandrasegar triumph of feminine creativity called Take away that monster/ develops her own narrative in to cope with marginalisation, That face that makes men stone, separate bodies of work that a symbol of the parturition of whoever she is (2009). The evolve in response to each other. beauty. The work does not cast work depicts the silhouette of a shadow; it is a black silhouette, Sandrasdegar has an extensive Medusa, beheaded, with an a shadow itself. Sandrasegar oeuvre that is primarily installation emerging Pegasus, in black felt has traditionally used the idea based, exploring the two- with embroidered sequins. The of shadow in her work, to bring dimensionality of sculptural media work was originally shown in attention to or re-claim the in cut-outs and other forms that, Old Wentworth Gaol in New ‘shadow figure” from its historic “employ shadow as key formal South Wales as a disturbing, connotations, bringing forward and conceptual motif,” merging yet poignant metaphor for to a position of prominence a with pattern, mark-making incarcerated women, however new image, as a visual device and watercolour investigations, in the context of Mythopoetic representing postcolonial that are often embellished an extension of the Medusa and hybrid critical theories. In with materials borrowed from metaphor is surveyed to include approaching the Medusa figure, popular-culture.1 Her poetic a wider symbolism in alignment Sandrasegar engages with a gestures highlight and juxtapose with the artist’s broader practice. 37

Sangeeta Sandrasegar Take Away That Monster/That Face That Makes Men Stone, Whoever She Is 2009, installation with felt, glass beads, sequins, and thread. Image courtesy of the artist and Murray White Room, Melbourne. Photographer: Ari Hatzis.

long history of feminist, semiotic dwelling in the fringes, she is a 1. Dan Rule” “A Reflection of Home”, and patriarchal interpretation. figure of hybridity to be celebrated Broadsheet, 2 July 2012: http://www. broadsheet.com.au/melbourne/arts- Author Hélène Cixous suggests and admired. and-entertainment/article/reflection- “Medusa has become a central home, accessed 3 March 2013. In 2004 Sangeeta Sandrasegar figure for the woman artist to 2. The work titled The scaffold called completed a Doctorate of struggle with”, for Sandrasegar the Motherland spews infinite grace Philosophy across the Victorian was recently acquired as part of it is not so much a struggle, she College of the Arts and the the permanent collection of the Art re-claims the shadow aspect Gallery of New South Wales. See Australian Centre at the University of the Gorgon, instead of the Recent Acquisitions, Art Gallery of of Melbourne. Sandrasegar’s ugly, frightening or grotesque, New South Wales Collection, Viktoria international exhibitions include, Marinov Bequest Fund 2012: http:// Sandrasegar offers the viewer Re-picturing the Feminine, Gallery www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/ an alternative—the beheading works/281.2012.a-h/ OED, a collateral exhibition of the of the matriarch is used to 3. Sangeeta Sandrasegar’s artist Kochi Muziris Biennale (2012), the represent the power of Medusa’s statement: http://sangeetasandrasegar. Incheon Women Artists Biennale blogspot.com.au/2009/06/take-away- creativity.4 The Medusa is a figure in Korea (2009), Slash: Paper that-monster-that-face-that.html of hybridity herself, traditionally Under the Knife, Museum of Arts 4. See authors Garber and Vickers depicted “as monstrous and and Design New York (2009), discussion of Hélène Cixous article through the hybrid composite of “The Laughter of the Medusa” (1975), the Fifth Asia Pacific Triennial human and animal parts, Medusa in their extensive The Medusa Reader, of Contemporary Art (APT 5) Routledge, 2003, 133. is made into a liminal creature”.5 at QAGOMA (2006–7), Public/ 5. See discussion of the Medusa’s body as Sandrasegar re-claims the hybrid Private: Auckland Triennial (2004). a hybrid figure in the article by Melissa creature from the liminal space, Skinner-La Porte ‘snakes on a Mane: Sandrasegar was awarded and uses her to demonstrate the Medusa, the Body and Serpentine the 2012 Rimbun Dahan Arts Monstrosity”, inter-disciplinary.net: power of feminine creativity, in Residency, Penang, Malaysia, http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/wp- this guise the Gorgon is thrust from which she has recently content/uploads/2010/08/mlaportepaper. into a position in which many pdf, accessed 13 March 2013. returned to Melbourne, Australia women can claim her as symbolic where she lives and works. to themselves, she is no longer SHAMBHAVI SYMBOLISM—RE-ASSIGNING “KALI”

38 Shambhavi’s original home is rural exploration of cosmology and the crimson black, rapier Patna, in the northern Indian state her visual devices. Her practice tongued mythical Red Kali of Bihar. Bihar is a land that has includes painting, printmaking, is Shambhavi’s idea of the ancient roots, connected to the papermaking, sculpture and Woman, the Goddess whose development of Buddhism and installation. powers of creation can sanctified in Hinduism because nurture the need for violence Red Kali (1997) is an earlier work the River Ganga or “the Ganges” against grave provocation.1 from the artist, portraying the traverses its length. Modern steel tongue of the Goddess of The tongue/triangle emerges Bihar, in contrast, is one of the Death. There are many stories from a red field in the corner of poorest Indian states; many of in Hindu mythology about the gallery space, in a gesture its residents have been forced Kali’s tongue, relating how the that forebodes this violence, to re-locate to find work and goddess’s rage is motivated depicting the liminal space are subjected to violence in into action against malevolent between malevolence and other parts of India. Shambhavi forces, evoking her dance of benevolence, an atmosphere herself now resides in Delhi, a destruction and thirst for the that permeates modern Indian displacement that has been a blood of demons, which could society. The red in the work can recurrent theme in her work. Her only be dissuaded through the represent many things, the rage WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA practice explores many issues intervention of her husband, the of the Goddess or the blood regarding domestic displacement God Shiva, who threw his body spilt through violence. Indian in India as a metaphor for larger beneath her feet. This surprised society, like many places in the universal human conditions. Kali, who poked out her tongue world, reveres the most benign Most recently Shambhavi has in shock! In Hindu Art, Kali institutions and, at the same

MYTHOPOETIC: focused on the sorrowful plight is traditionally depicted with time, is capable of deplorable of farmers from Bihar, who, protruding tongue as reference to horrors enacted in the name of relegated to the periphery of her humble position and the many those institutions (like the Gujarat society in a globalised India, have stories in the Hindu pantheon riots between Hindu and Muslim been suiciding in large numbers that relate it. Red Kali plays on extremists in 2002). Shambhavi’s (a similar predicament to those the myriad associations with the Red Kali recontextualises the working the land in Australia). goddess’s tongue, while cleverly myth by appropriating the Shambhavi’s work is centered referencing the triangle symbol symbol of the goddess’s tongue, around a symbol or object that as the Yantric form of Shakti representing contemporary serves as a visual/conceptual (divine femininity in Hinduism), society while reconciling binary reference-point and metaphor, and the vaginal/vulvic shape oppositions through the idea of a bringing unanticipated elements common to Western feminist art, universal, divine, feminine figure into proximity, from a milieu signifying the gendered space with ultimate knowledge. The combining the socio-political in the work. The artist adopts artist uses a symbol belonging India, cosmology, mythology the tongue symbol, portraying to a classical Hindu figure to and popular culture. Shambhavi a divine feminine power that epitomise the complexity of attempts to reconcile her will vociferously rage, a female modern India, from a universal feelings and experiences about figure that will be instinctually position that speaks to the these issues in works, rich with impelled to take action, with force, wider experiences of violence in symbolism, to portray universal against violence. Sanjog Sharan global culture. Red Kali is given human conditions, which are describes this position stating: a fundamentally different context often reflected through the artist’s 39

Shambhavi Red Kali 1997, watercolour on handmade paper, 12 sheets. Image courtesy of the artist and Talwar Galleries, New York and New Delhi. Photographer: Carl Warner.

through the assignment of the in New Delhi and Bombay, the 1. See Sanjog Sharan, “Containing the foreboding tongue, a tool for Association for Visual Arts (AVA) Cosmos,” Shambhavi: Lonely Furrow, ex. cat., Singapore Tyler Print Institute, peace and a weapon against in Cape Town, South Africa Robertson Quay, Singapore, 2011, 6. violence. The Hindu Goddess and the Tropen Museum, The Maha Kali is visually transfigured Netherlands. She participated in in Shambhavi’s work, a metaphor the prestigious Khoj International for the wider potentials for Artist Workshops in 2002 and violence in humanity. 2009. In 2011, Shambhavi’s participation in a residency at the Shambhavi’s work has been Singapore Tyler Print Institute, acquired as part of the permanent saw her produce a major body collection of MOMA, New York of work that was exhibited in a and she has exhibited widely show and publication titled Lonely internationally in museums Furrow (2011). and galleries including the National Gallery of Modern Art LIST OF WORKS Griffith University Art Gallery (GUAG)

40 Marnie Dean Sonia KHURANA Sangeeta Sandrasegar (1975–) Brisbane, Queensland, (1968–) Saharanpur, Uttar (1977–) Brisbane, Queensland, Australia Pradesh, India Australia Morrigan-Kali the ‘SHE-WOLF’: Flower Carrier III 2006 Take Away That Monster/That Wave of the Future 2012 Face That Makes Men Stone, single channel video, 4:3, colour, Whoever She Is 2009 lightbox illumination, digital print stereo sound, 10 minutes, looped on transparency, customised installation: felt, glass beads, Courtesy of the artist display sequins, thread

lightbox: 76 x 160cm; wooden Logic of Birds 2006 dimensions variable display: 183 x 185 x 22cm single-channel video, 4:3, colour, Courtesy of the artist and Murray Collection: Mr Binoj Cheruvathur silent version, looped White Room, Melbourne Kochurry, India Courtesy of the artist Shambhavi Fiona Hall Lying-down-on-the-ground:

WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA (1966–) Patna, Bihar, India (1953–) Sydney, New South Additional Notes 2009 Red Kali 1997 Wales, Australia single channel video, 4:3, black watercolour on handmade paper 21st Century Man 2011 and white and colour, mono US Dollars, unique works from a sound, looped 12 sheets: 366 x 488cm

MYTHOPOETIC: series of 25, #11, 12, 14, 15, 16 Courtesy of the artist (12 x 16ft) overall and 18 six sheets, each 47 × 34cm Courtesy of the artist and Talwar Galleries, New York and New Pushpamala N. Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Delhi Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney (1956–) Bangalore, India Indrajaala/Seduction 2012 Pat Hoffie from the series Avega—The (1953–) Edinburgh, Scotland, UK Passion: The Drama of Three Women (Collaboration with Veronica Sepulveda, 1980–, Santiago, single-channel digital video, 4:3, Chile) black and white, silent, 4:27 minutes looped Ideology and Artefact #2 2012 Courtesy of the artist and Nature silk, plastic, cardboard, Fimo Morte, New Delhi installation dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist LIST OF WORKS Project Gallery

Di BALL Laini BURTON 41 Brisbane, Queensland, Australia (1974–) Brisbane, Queensland, Australia BinDi Ball Is Deeply Superficial 2012 Taking Atlas (Stealth) 2013 single-channel digital video, 16:9 diptych: pencil, ink and gouache colour, sound, 15 minutes looped on paper The artist would like to thank 84.1 x 59.4cm each Kim Thelander for the Tagore Courtesy of the artist translation by Shaoni Muckerjee read by Jose Large to music composed by Martin Kirkbright. Simone EISLER Thanks also to Mahin who opened my heart and helped me (1975–) Brisbane, Queensland, to sing again. Australia Courtesy of the artist Field 2007 ilmenite and cow horn dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist, Spiro Grace Art Rooms, Brisbane and Gallerysmith, Melbourne LIST OF WORKS Webb Gallery

42 Mandy RIDLEY Dhruvi ACHARY (1961–) Richmond, Victoria, (1971–) Mumbai, India Australia Mumbai City 2008 Sometimes I Feel My Heart Will digital print on canvas Burst 2012 diptych: 121.9 x 487.6cm; 121.9 hand cut digital print, LED lights x 243.8cm each canvas 230 x 550 x 12cm Courtesy of the artist and Courtesy of the artist Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai Ann-Maree REANEY and Jill KINNEAR Kate BEYNON (1959–) Maryborough, (1970–) Hong Kong Queensland, Australia Trans-Mythic Woman Warrior WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA (1953–) Dundee, Scotland Series 2012 Road Trip India — An Act of Faith Transfigured Gorgon 2013 Transcultural Spider Goddess triptych: digital prints on paper Nine-Tailed Fox Spirit MYTHOPOETIC: 85 x 250cm overall Warrior Mer-Woman Courtesy of the artists Guardian Ranger with Lion Dogs five canvases: acrylic and Swarovski crystals each 40.5cm diameter Courtesy the artist, Milani Gallery, Brisbane and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Curator’s acknowledgments

Mythopoetic surveys art and with the generous and inspiring 43 creative practice as an example Nalini Malani for her guidance, of a developing visual culture continuing encouragement and that is re-defining the image of example of professionalism. women in the South Asian and I would like to thank several Asia Pacific regions. Thanks artists included in this exhibition, to the longstanding support who were physically with me of Queensland College of Art in India they are (alphabetically) (Galleries) and Griffith University Di Ball, Kate Beynon, Fiona Art Gallery, this exhibition Hall, Pat Hoffie. Sonia Khurana, provides a platform that Pushpamala N., Shambhavi showcases the very best intent and Mandy Ridley, for their of Indian and Australian cultural commitment to this cross-cultural practice. It is with this celebratory dialogue and equally I would accord that Mythopoetic shares also like to thank artists Dhruvi a wider participation in Griffith Acharya, Laini Burton, Simone University’s festival Encounters: Eisler, Sangeeta Sandrasegar India. (who participated in both The exhibition Mythopoetic: exhibitions also) and Ann-Maree Women Artists from Australia Reaney and Jill Kinnear for all and India has been made their wonderful contributions possible due to the initiation of to Mythopoetic. My awesome Cassandra Schultz, Professor colleagues in this exhibition, Pat Hoffie, Naomi Evans and Naomi Evans and Cassandra Simon P. Wright, with the support Schultz, have cleverly devised of Professor Paul Cleveland. In the first joint exhibition housed India, I would like to thank the across Galleries on Griffith Australian High Commission Universities’ Southbank campus, and the Department of Foreign in Griffith University Art Gallery Affairs who supported the (GUAG) and Queensland College exhibition I curated as part of of Art Galleries (QCA Galleries) their Ozfest initiative and the Webb and Project spaces and Kochi Muziris Biennale, from I thank them for their invaluable which this exhibition Mythopoetic contributions that have helped has emerged. I would also like shape this exhibition. to acknowledge and thank the indomitable curator Johan Pijnappel for all his help, together acknowledgments

44 Griffith University Art Gallery Griffith University QCA GallerIES and QCA Galleries wish to Art Gallery Staff Staff acknowledge the special Naomi Evans Cassandra Schultz contribution of Marnie Dean, artist Acting Director | Curator QCA Galleries Coordinator and emerging curator of this project, and all of the exhibiting Karen La Rocca Emily Gray artists and their representatives Administrator Curatorial Intern who made it possible for Jo Duke Jodie Cunneen artworks to be loaned and to Art Collection Manager QCA Galleries Intern feature in Brisbane. Our thanks to Professor Paul Cleveland, Camille Serisier Francesca Vanderwoude Director, Queensland College Curatorial and Collections Officer QCA Galleries Volunteer of Art and Earle Bridger, Deputy Robert Corless Brian Sanstrom Director (Development) and Exhibitions and Public Programs Art preparator and Technical Senior Lecturer, Queensland Officer Support College of Art, for their valuable support of this exhibition from Kathryn Sawyer Kieron Wilson

WOMEN ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA AND INDIA its inception, and for their Collections Assistant Volunteer Technician, QCA Gallery generous contribution toward Lisa Bryan-Brown and, the wonderful team of this publication. We thank the Curatorial volunteer Volunteer Gallery Attendants Queensland Conservatorium of Music, and the Encounters: Art preparators

MYTHOPOETIC: India team for the opportunity to Dr Chris Bennie, Audrey Lam, partner with the precinct wide Michael Littler, Kathryn Sawyer festival. Naomi Evans wishes to Gallery Invigilators thank the staff of Griffith Artworks Lisa Bryan-Brown, Simone Eisler, and Griffith University Art Gallery, Gabrielle McTaggert, Nicola Scott, our skilled art preparators, Kylie Spear. interns, volunteers and curatorial students of Craig Douglas for their assistance in realising the exhibition. Cassandra Schultz wishes to thank all staff, interns and volunteers for their invaluable help in mounting Mythopoetic.

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