Indrani Perera

poet, publisher & mentor

Tag: exhibition

Feared and Revered: Feminine Power Through the Ages

It's the middle of winter. Actually it's only the start. But I'm in Canberra where it's absolutely freezing so it feels like it's the middle. I'm here to visit family and to catch the Feared and Revered: Feminine Power Through the Ages exhibition at the National Museum of Australia. According to the website, this blockbuster collaboration with the British Museum 'celebrates the power and diversity of female spiritual beings in cultural traditions and beliefs across the globe.’

In planning our visit to the exhibition I came across this excellent sensory map for the museum as well as the quiet hours guide for the exhibition. It’s wonderful to see a national institution catering for the needs of all visitors. Every time I visit this museum I see the enticing exhibits in the foyer and promise myself that next time I’ll make more time to see the other rooms. It also has a brilliant shop with a fantastic range of books and gifts. I must remember to save the pennies before my next visit!

I’m not sure what I think about this exhibition. I really wanted to like it because it’s continuing the current trend of recognising women’s contributions to the arts. It joins the National Gallery of Australia’s Know My Name and ACMI’s current Goddess exhibition in positioning women firmly within the narrative we tell about ourselves as human beings. Celebrating and sharing feminine stories, identities and beings is vital for everyone, not just women and non-binary folks.

The whole thing was in one large room which was good because you could see in one glance the whole exhibition and pace yourself accordingly. There was enough to feel like you were getting your money’s worth but not so much that it felt overwhelming. The exhibits themselves were grouped into five sections of Nature & Creation, Passion & Desire, Magic & Malice, Justice & Defence and Compassion & Salvation. However it was hard at times to know which exhibits belonged to which section because they weren’t clearly divided. A platform running through the centre to divide the different areas would have been great.

Feared and Revered had a great range of exhibits spanning centuries and regions across the globe including Africa, Asia, Europe, India, Latin America, North America and the Pacific. There were sculptures, paintings, clothes, masks, coins, figurines and more. The historical and contextual background for each piece was fantastic as was the information about the artist. Unfortunately, most of the exhibits were displayed in cases which made it almost impossible to take a good photo or get a good look at the contents because of the reflections on the glass. It made me realise that I usually visit galleries where the art is much easier to view.

I really enjoyed seeing how women have been portrayed through the centuries. Seeing the common threads and the differences. And seeing creation, death and destruction from a female perspective. It’s quite different to the usual patriarchal art made by white men that inhabits most gallery and museum spaces. I particularly enjoyed the Creation painting by Judy Chicago that imagines the world being birthed from a woman’s vagina.

My favourite pieces were the almost 2,000 year old Roman/Greek marble sculptures, the head dress from Nigeria, the Maori cloak woven from flax seeds and the Kali statue wearing a necklace of severed heads.

While I had mixd feelings about the exhibition, on the whole it was thoughtfully curated and a great introduction to women and power through the ages. If you’re in Canberra it is well worth checking out.

June 30, 2023
Goddess: Power, Glamour, Rebellion

This was my first visit to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (or ACMI as it's better known) at Federation Square and I was really impressed with the enticing looking exhibition spaces leading off from the main entrance and foyer. We were there to see the Goddess: Power, Glamour, Rebellion exhibition but I could easily have spent more time exploring the rest of the gallery.

The start of the exhibition featured glamorous goddesses and screen icons such as Marilyn Monroe and Madonna wearing iconic pink dresses symbolising femininity.

The exhibition included posters, magazines, costumes, photographs and moving images from a wide variety of films with women in starring roles. There were Hollywood and Bollywood stars, African and Asian actors as well as gender busting pioneers. We saw sultry screen sirens such as Marelne Dietrich and Mae West who got around the Hayes Code for morality with innuendo and double entendre. The Hayes Code forbade among other things the portrayal of mixed race relationships and sex outside of marriage.

I often think that the funny thing about the past is the way that we think people were less enlightened, less progressive, less everything really. But it's not the case as you can see from the movie poster above of When Roaring Gulch Got Suffrage, made early last century. Women have fought for equality for a very long time.

My favourite parts of this exhibition were the clips and exhibits about films in other languages. There was a short from the Indian film, Pakeezah (1972), starring Meena Kumari that took an incredible fifteen years to make. Unfortunately Kumari died three weeks after the film's premiere and she didn't live to see its success in both India and Pakistan. Audiences fell in love with the costumes and would buy their tailors tickets to the movie so they could make them clothes based on those of the film.

You've probably never heard of Anna May Wong. Don't worry, I hadn't either but we should know her name. She was an Asian American actor and movie star working in Hollywood in the 1920s and 30s. Unfortunately she was limited to playing either the villainous Dragon Lady or the subservient White Lotus. Due to the Chinese Exclusion Act which fuelled anti-Chinese sentiment, Chinese characters were viewed as villains. Any nuanced Chinese roles went to white actors such as German Luise Rainer who won an Oscar for her 'yellowface' performance in The Good Earth (1937), a role Wong had lobbied to play.

There was also a 1906 French comedy from Alice Guy-Blaché, Les Résultats du féminisme (Consequences of Feminism) that did a gender switch and had the men sewing and ironing while the women smoked, drank and made a mess. At the end of this seven minute satire, the men overthrow the matriarchy and gain their freedom.

Unusually for an exhibition, it left me wanting more. I could have easily spent another hour or two immersed in the world of screen goddesses. I would have loved to have seen African, Indigenous, Latinx, Eastern European, Asian cinema and actors represented in more depth and detail. But this was a good beginning.

Seeing this exhibition made me want to rewrite the histories and our narratives to include a much wider and broader range of woman. After seeing the Cressida Campbell exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra earlier in the year and talking to a friend about history books that are writing women back into the narrative, I am hopeful that we are on the crest of a wave, make that a tsunami, that will wash away the past and bring equality to our art, our screens, our books and our histories.

June 19, 2023
Sabotage and Tradition

I was originally put off seeing this exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria by the poster which showed a mash up of lipstick covered mouths. But my almost seventeen year old daughter was keen to go so I agreed (go on then, twist my arm to visit a gallery). I am super glad that she insisted and that I agreed to go. It was a good lesson in not judging book by its cover or an exhibition by its poster.

Alexander McQueen, Mind Mythos and Muse was an excellent exhibition of the designer's work spanning a series of collections from his career. Sadly McQueen is no longer alive and the first room of the exhibition showed the collection that was two thirds complete when he died.

McQueen took images, be it from a medieval panting or the crystalline structure of gem stones and had them woven into fabric which was then cut and made into clothing. He used materials such as leather, wool and synthetics to create his designs which played with and deconstructed form and style – think super low crotch pants and upside-down lapels. His tailoring was equisite and made me want to visit a tailor and get a custom made coat!

Seeing this exhibition made me want to go out and learn as much as possible about McQueen, his life, career and design process. I am fascinated with how things are done and seeing behind the scenes. I appreciated the shots of the models getting dressed and goofing around backstage.

The gallery also commissioned Michael Schmidt to make a series of headpieces for the exhibition so we had a double dose of style and talent.

April 14, 2023
Know My Name

How many female artists can you name? How many of those are Australian?

Less than a quarter of the artists represented in the National Gallery of Australia’s collection in Canberra are female. Approximately a third of the artists in the NGA’s Indigenous collection are female. This is in spite of women significantly outnumbering men in art at the tertiary level. Worse, only two percent of the global art market is represented by women.

This thought provoking article says ‘…artists who are not white men come with qualifiers, whether it's "woman artist", "black artist", or "disabled artist".

Art historian Griselda Pollock says ‘In that qualifying, I have disqualified them from automatically being part of this neutral category: artist.’

The NGA’s initiative, Know My Name seeks to address this shortcoming with exhibitions featuring artists who are female.

Ironically the first two exhibitions in the series to expand the category of artist in the Australian imagination were held during the pandemic so hardly anyone got to see the works and learn a more complete picture of the story of art in this country. Unfortunately I don’t think there are any plans to tour these exhibitions which is a travesty. It should be required viewing for all high school students.

Cressida Campbell has been an artist for forty years and this year marks the 40th anniversary of the NGA. Campbell attended the opening of the gallery forty years ago and she is still painting. It’s the first time the gallery had featured a living, female Australian artist in its summer blockbuster exhibition.

Campbell sketches drawings on plywood which she then paints with watercolours. When the paint is dry, she uses an electrical tool to carve the wood. This woodblock is then misted with water from a spray bottle and a piece of paper is laid on top. A roller then presses the paint into the paper. This process is repeated until Campbell is happy with the result. Once the paper is removed she touches up both the block and it’s print. Only a single print is made from the block and both the print and the block are sold for around $500,000 each.

Even though she is a commercially successful artist championed by Margaret Olley who bought her paintings and donated them to galleries, most of the works in the exhibition came from private collections.

Seeing her woodblocks side by side with their reverse prints was wonderful. There was also a display case filled with paint brushes, rollers, empty paint tubes and the brace she wears to support her wrist.

Campbell’s work focuses on details of intimate interiors as well as landscapes and botanical illustrations. My favourites were the tondo painting – the round prints with thin white frames.

The exhibition featured a video of Campbell talking about her work as well as images of her meticulous process. She talks on the phone or listens to music when she’s painting but when it’s time to make the print she closes all the windows and turns off the phone and radio so she can have complete silence and focus on the process.

I didn’t think I was going to have a chance to see this exhibition but I managed to squeeze it in before my flight home. I’m so glad I managed to see it.

January 29, 2023
Kaleidoscope

A maze of mirrors.

Coloured lights.

Mesmerising music.

And no exit signs.

Welcome to Kaleidoscope where you have to find your way out!

July 14, 2022
Love and Desire

On my recent trip to Canberra I managed to squeeze in a visit to the National Gallery of Australia to check out the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition, Love & Desire. I took my mum and my two girls to see these magnificent paintings from the 1800s.

When I was in my 20s I was a huge fan of John William Waterhouse. He's the painter most people associate with this period in art even though he wasn't one of the original seven members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. There's even a print of his very famous painting, The Lady of Shallott, at my folks from when I lived there.

It was wonderful to see the paintings in real life. Get up close and see the brushstrokes. Marvel in the incredible detail.

We did the guided tour and it was fascinating to hear stories about the artists as well as those of the people in the paintings. It's the first time I've done a guided tour in a gallery and I'll definitely be doing more. Sue, our guide, was knowledgeable and full of trivia. She was also very respectful and mindful of my daughters (aged 8 and 12) and pitched her talk to accomodate them.

Unlike a lot of artists, the pre-Raphaelites actually made money in their life times. They were canny sales people and sold reproductions of their works. They were able to capitalise on technology and deliver art to the masses, foreshadowing the future.

March 25, 2019
Love and Desire

On my recent trip to Canberra I managed to squeeze in a visit to the National Gallery of Australia to check out the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition, Love & Desire. I took my mum and my two girls to see these magnificent paintings from the 1800s.

When I was in my 20s I was a huge fan of John William Waterhouse. He's the painter most people associate with this period in art even though he wasn't one of the original seven members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. There's even a print of his very famous painting, The Lady of Shallott, at my folks from when I lived there.

It was wonderful to see the paintings in real life. Get up close and see the brushstrokes. Marvel in the incredible detail.

We did the guided tour and it was fascinating to hear stories about the artists as well as those of the people in the paintings. It's the first time I've done a guided tour in a gallery and I'll definitely be doing more. Sue, our guide, was knowledgeable and full of trivia. She was also very respectful and mindful of my daughters (aged 8 and 12) and pitched her talk to accomodate them.

Unlike a lot of artists, the pre-Raphaelites actually made money in their life times. They were canny sales people and sold reproductions of their works. They were able to capitalise on technology and deliver art to the masses, foreshadowing the future.

March 25, 2019