Lesbian Art: An Encounter with Power

Michele Barker is an artist and academic working in the field of media arts with a focus on experimental cinema as a way of exploring the perception and experience of time and embodied engagement with the environment. Her work, in extensive collaboration with Anna Munster, has been included in Vidarte, the Mexican Biennale of Video Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Taipei, The Photographer’s Gallery, London; FILE Festival, Sao Paolo; Museum of Art, Seoul; and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Out of a residency at Eyebeam in New York they developed the award-winning work, *Struck*, which has been exhibited in Australia, the US, China and Taiwan. Largescale works include: *évasion*, an 8-channel responsive installation; and the multi-channel interactive work, *HokusPokus*, jury-selected to represent Australasia as part of the International Festival of Digital Art and the Cultural Olympiad in London in 2012. In 2017, they were commissioned to create *pull* for Experimenta Make Sense: Triennial of Media Art, touring Australia, 2017–20, and most recently, *hold* (2019), both of which use water as a force outside humans’ short ‘moment’ in geological time in order to explore time and embodied perception. Currently, as the result of an Ars Bioarctica residency in Kilpisjärvi, they are working on a new project that extends our examination of duration and felt experience into the realm of geotime.

Vivienne Binns OAM (b. 1940) is a pioneer of feminist, collaborative and community-based practice in Australia. Binns’ first exhibition, at Watters Gallery in 1967, was widely criticised for its provocative and sexually explicit imagery. After the Watters exhibition, Binns embarked on a range of ephemeral, cross-disciplinary and collaborative projects that precipitated her role as a leading figure in the development of community-based practices in Australia. Her career is characterised by a succession of firsts, including as a founding member of the Sydney Women’s Art Movement in 1974, and her participation in *An Exhibition of Homosexual and Lesbian Artists* at Watters Gallery in 1978, the earliest undertaking of its kind in Australia. Binns’ landmark work, *Mothers’ memories, others’ memories*, involved collaborating with participants at the University of New South Wales and then at Blacktown, a western suburb of Sydney, to record matrilineal histories at a time when women’s experiences were seldom valued or documented. Her subsequent work, *Tower of Babel*, continued her collaborative, feminist and community-based approach to production. Binns returned to painting in the 1980s but remained deeply involved with community projects. Over the following years, she worked as an educator, teaching painting, drawing and art theory at Sydney University, Charles Sturt University (Albury), and the Australian National University. She developed a reputation as a generous mentor to artists including Geoff Newton, Dionisia Salas, Trevelyan Clay, Liang Luscomb and Charlie Sofo. In 2021 Binns was the recipient of the Australia Council Award for Visual Arts, in 1985 she was given the Ros Bower Memorial Award for visionary contribution to community arts and in 1983 she was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for Services to Art and Craft. Binns’ most recent work in painting and assemblage is a way of processing her prior community and feminist practice as well as an extension of her concerns in the materials and methods of surfacing in painting. Her abiding interests are the function of art making as a human activity, which occurs in all social groups, and the manifestations of this throughout these communities. This is especially visible in Binns’ use of patterning and surface treatments, which connect historical art movements to domestic or familiar imagery. Binns has continued to exhibit regularly with her dealers: Watters Gallery, Sydney (until 1995), Bellas Gallery (now Milani Gallery), Brisbane and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne. Selected Binns' solo exhibitions include *Vivienne Binns: On and Through the Surface*, co-presented by Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2022); *It Is What It Is What It Is*, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, (2018); *New Work*, Milani Gallery, Brisbane (2014); *Vivienne Binns – Art and Life*, Latrobe University Museum of Art (2012); *Everything New is Old Again*, Sutton Gallery (2008); *A Symphony of Uncertainties: In Memory of Unknown Artists and Scenes of Popular Reverie*, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra (2007); *Vivienne Binns*, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart (2006); and *Vivienne Binns: Twenty First Century Paintings*, The Cross Art Projects, Sydney (2004). Selected group exhibitions include *QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection*, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2022); *Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now*, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2020); *Unfinished Business: Perspectives on Art & Feminism*, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne (2018); *Painting, More Painting*, ACCA (2016); *Painting Amongst Other Things*, Drill Hall Gallery, ANU SOAD Gallery, ANCA Gallery (2018); *Pop to Popism*, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2015); *Lurid Beauty*, National Gallery of Victoria (2015); *Temperament Spectrum*, Sutton Gallery (2012); *Stick it!: Collage in Australian Art*, National Gallery of Victoria (2010); and *Cross Currents: Focus on Contemporary Australian Art*, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2007).

Linda Dement (b.1960) is an Australian multidisciplinary artist who began exhibiting in 1984. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts) from City Art Institute, Sydney in 1988. Originally a photographer, her digital practice spans the programmed, performative, textual and virtual. Her work deals with issues of disturbance, commingling psycho-sexual corporeality and the digital and electronic, giving form to the difficult territory of the unbearable and conflicted. Along with Australian artist collective VNS Matrix, Dement's work pioneered Australian cyberfeminism in art. Cyberfeminist politics and poetics used technology to deconstruct gender stereotypes in mainstream culture, and proactively situated women in relation to the rise of electronic culture in the early 1990s. Some of Dement's early works came under censorship by the Australian Government. *Typhoid Mary* (1991) was taken to the NSW Parliament as being "obscene" and subsequently came under the classification of the Australian Government's Office of Film and Literature as "not suitable for those under the age of 18." *In My Gash* (1999) also received a formal "Restricted" classification. Dement's programmed and still image work has been widely exhibited internationally and locally, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art London, Ars Electronica Austria, multiple International Symposia of Electronic Art and Impakt Media Arts Festivals in Europe. She is twice winner of the Australian National Digital Art Award and has been awarded a New Media Arts Fellowship by the Australia Council for the Arts. Her work is held in collections such as the Bibliotèque Nationale de France, Australian Video Art Archive, New York Filmmakers Co-op and the Daniel Langlois Foundation.

Kaye Shumack (b. 1953–2021) was an artist predominately known her street posters and photographs in the 1990s that were heavily influenced by the 1960s pop culture of Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed and Paul Morrissey. In 1996 Shumack’s ‘The Hard Ground Posters’ were distributed to Sydney’s inner-city Italian Cafe’s in what she described as relating to the idea of ‘latte lesbians’. Shumack’s provocative billboard poster that depicted hip and powerful lesbian women was ripped down by vandals after only two weeks of greeting traffic. Shumack made multiple posters and images for Mardi Gras parades in the 1990s. Shumack exhibited work alongside other prominent queer artists in the group shows ‘Photosynthesis’ and ‘Queerography’ (1994) at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.

Jacqui Stockdale (b. 1968) lives and works in Naarm, Melbourne, Australia. Having grown up in the rural town of Benalla, Victoria, Stockdale has established herself as an artist of international significance. Her multilayered art practice explores her fascination with the representation of the body, ritual, Australian history and constructed identity. Her work was celebrated through the 2016 exhibition Familija, surveying 15 years of her drawing, painting, collage and photography. Her survey show 'The Offering' was presented by the Tweed Regional Gallery in 2023. Jacqui has exhibited extensively throughout Australia and internationally and has been included in exhibitions such as Beating About the Bush, Art Gallery of Ballarat; 20/20, the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra; Magic Object, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, AGSA; Theatre of the World, MONA; Alles Masquerade, Museum Rot, Germany; Todays/Tomorrow, Cape Town, South Africa, Living Rooms, curated by Robert Wilson, Louvre Museum, Paris; Outlands, Volta, Switzerland; and Wonderworks, Hong Kong.

Carole Wilson (b. 1960) is an Australian artist living and working in Ballarat, Victoria where she is Associate Professor in Visual Arts, Institute of Education, Arts and Community and Higher Degrees by Research Coordinator in the Graduate Research School at Federation University Australia. Carole has extensive supervision and examination experience of practice led research higher degrees in the visual arts. Her undergraduate study was at both the Canberra School of Art and Philip Institute of Technology, now RMIT, Melbourne and she completed a PhD at the University of Ballarat in 2001. Her original training was in printmaking and she was a founding member of Jillposters, feminist poster group, in 1983 and worked at Another Planet Posters, Melbourne. Carole has held regular solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions nationally and internationally. For the past twenty years she has utilised discarded and salvaged materials such as floral carpets, maps and atlases to create works which engage with aspects of botany, garden history, travel and historical ornament. In recent years she has undertaken residencies in Italy, the US, Malaysia and the Netherlands which have all had a significant impact on her work. She is represented in many public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the Powerhouse Museum, State Library of Victoria and a number of regional and university galleries. Her posters are in museum collections in Finland, the Czech Republic, Russia and Poland.

Deej Fabyc (b.1961) works with performance, installation, photography and video. Their work has for many years addressed the psychological dimensions of the personal and political experience of trauma. Current performance work is engaged with wicked embodied mapping of narratives of awkwardness, neurodiversity, ageing, loss, mental health and chronic illness. Fabyc has performed in museums, night clubs, and the street internationally since the 1980s. Performances have occurred in *How do I look* with GraceGraceGrace at Guest Projects London, *Theatres of Contagion Conference *at Birkbeck London, and *Collaborations* with Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens in Documenta both in Athens and Kassel. Deej has held a one year residency bursary at Artsadmin, London and has completed residencies at Dartington School of Art, Devon, the Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, and Rules and Regs, at A Space Gallery, Southampton. Significant performances include *Details* at L’abracada Festival International d’Art Contemporani, Castell de la Bisbal, Spain 2006; *And She Watched*, Trace Installation Artspace, Cardiff, 2005 and Kingsgate Gallery, London 2004; and in *Don’t Call it Performance*, Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid and Centro Parraga, Murcia, Spain, 2003. Fabyc has a highly collaborative practice and has been a founding member of several collaborative projects including the underground feminist art collective JILLPOSTERS in Melbourne in the 1980s, and Elastic ARI Sydney 2000-2001 Elastic Residence, a London ARI 2004-11 of KISSS, an international curatorium of artists working with issues of surveillance. Since 2018 Fabyc has been Chair of FBI, a feminist network of artists. They are the Executive director of Live Art Ireland – Elain Bheo Centre for Art Research and Development at Milford House. Fabyc is Australian, but was born in London, spending their early childhood in England and Ireland before travelling to Australia aboard the P&O Arcadia to start secondary school. They completed their BFA at Southern Cross University and gained an MFA from the University of New South Wales Art and Design school. In 1996, their work was featured in Elizabeth Ashburn's book *Lesbian Art: An Encounter with Power*, an Art and Australia publication. Fabyc has taught performance/fine art in the HE sector, the prison system and community settings for the past 20 years and currently lives in Tipperary Ireland whilst lecturing at the School of Art, Architecture & Design, London Metropolitan University.