What does it mean to present as a 'lesbian' artist? The very identity categories 'gay', 'lesbian', 'heterosexual' are extremely problematic. Now that 'I' am out, I find that I am in - inside a category that reduces rather than expands possibilities for me, not just as an artist, but as a person.
"Women in art must look to the future as they have no past" said Mary Cecil Allen at an opening of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors in 1935. A critical examination of the current art practices of women in Australia.
During the past 8 years or so there have been two distinctive strands of activity which women artists have pursued in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Both are concerned with questions of identity. Artists Fiona Pardington, Emily Karaka, Shona Davies, Christine Webster and Robyn Kahukiwa.
Some reflections on a paper entitled the Horror of the Gaze. Art criticism is, perhaps, an art form and not expected primarily to make sense. There is no consensus about what art is, but we do seem to share an urge to understand what critics say about it.