ARTEMIS Women's Art Forum

BEGINNING OF INTERVIEW

Christine: So did you know about the ARTEMIS Women’s Art Forum in Perth? Were you a part of it or did you know someone who was? That hundreds of members before it disbanded in 1990 and there’s an amazing archive held at the State Library of WA detailing what was an incredibly dynamic chapter in Perth’s history; a confluence of culture and politics and women’s rights.

Dr Kate Gregory, Battye Historian from the State Library is here to guide us through it.

Hello Kate.

KG: Hello Christine.

Christine: Nice to have you back in.

So how did this archive find its way to the State Library? This unto itself is a very interesting story.

KG: It’s a great story. That’s right. The archive itself was actually left in the former gallery of the ARTEMIS building. It was the Art’s House building in the Perth Cultural Centre. So it was kind of abandoned in some ways. It was left there once ARTEMIS had disbanded and it was only because the Department of Culture and the Arts actually donated the archive to the State Library that it came to be archived and preserved.

Christine: That’s lucky.

KG: [Laughs] They were very lucky. It was a very, yes, that’s right...very, very lucky thing because archives like this one are actually quite rare within our collections. It’s a really interesting archive. It’s very comprehensive. There are over eight or nine archival boxes, about 146 folders. It includes the remnants of a women’s art register that ARTEMIS set up in the 1980s. So it’s a really rich and really fascinating archive and I mean I’ve been...I’ve been looking through some of the folders and files this morning and just sort of diving into that world, you know 1985, 1986, this very passionate group of women artists, very diverse and broad group of artists as well across all sorts of media and formats, even into radio for instance, sort of female and women’s early broadcasters; those that were involved with the early days of RTRFM 6UVS at the time.

Christine: [Astonishment] Oh wow!

KG: Publishers and writers...so really informed, passionate women who were sort of on the cusp of both motherhood and practising artists and trying to blend both worlds and they just did so many interesting things. In some ways I think they were well ahead of their time because for instance one of the things that they insured was that all of their members...coming to meetings, or to events or exhibitions or forums that they would put on, would have access to free child care.

Christine: Really?

KG: They paid a professional child care worker to come and look after the children of these members of the ARTEMIS art collective.

Christine: Wow.

KG: And that was just so...such forethought because it showed that women at that time...I mean at this time, they definitely at that time....

Christine: Yeah...

KG: Were really battling those dual roles and responsibilities as...

Christine: That’s so impressive

KG: Often the primary...yes...primary caregivers but also forging careers as practising artists and so ARTEMIS was really involved in making sure that was recognised and supported.

Christine: It’s interesting that you should mention the media, The Newsreader, on ABC iview. I’m not sure if you’ve had a chance to watch it but that is a great reminder of what things were like for women in the eighties.

KG: [Astonishment] Yes.

Christine: It’s...watching some of those episodes has been infuriating.

KG: I know!

Christine: And a reminder for how much has changed so I feel grateful as you know...the...

KG: I think...yes that’s absolutely right and the thing about it is, it’s kind of such recent history. It’s the 1980s. It’s recent history, but at the same time it’s so long ago as well [laughs].

Christine: Yes, I feel like you’d be the beneficiary of it though...I tell you.

KG: Well, absolutely right, but even...and I agree with you wholeheartedly on that. I think that looking at this archive this morning as well, the other thing that I realised was that this is on the cusp of computerisation. They...they...what with their first grant the officer for ARTEMIS, they had one paid position through their first grant which was federally funded through a Commonwealth employment community employment scheme and they purchased a state of the art Mac computer.

Christine: I bet it was the size of a building.

KG: [Laughs]

Christine: It was a cream...

KG: 1985...

Christine: Yes...it’s a big deal.

KG: A beige kind of box that...I can almost remember them. And you can see these...the archive itself is paper based but their type written, type written on this Mac.

Christine: With the paper with the holes on the side.

KG: Yes, a bit of that too. And so...

Christine: Oh what a good time...

KG: It’s just...it’s a really interesting moment for the archive [laughs].

Christine: So how was ARTEMIS Women’s Art Forum formed?

KG: Ok, so look ARTEMIS was devoted to raising the status of women in the arts in Perth in the 1980s and I guess it really began as a series of informal meetings between women who were working in the arts and I think it began through Praxis Gallery which was in Fremantle and a real hub for contemporary art practice in the eighties and so it started with women having these informal meetings and then it sort of garnered...it started to grow and I think that there was a lot emerging around feminist art practised at that time. Ten years earlier, Lucy Lippard who was an American art critic and feminist / art historian had visited Australia and she’d visited Sydney and Melbourne and Perth. And she gave lectures, she went to artists’ studios and although that was 10 years prior, it had really stimulated some questions about the role of women in the arts and women...visual artists over time and questions around...were being asked within art history by Linda Nochlin and other art critics around...and Lucy Lippard around why have there been no great women artists, which of course there had but it raises all these questions around the canon, the Western art canon and what role women played within that and the erasure of certain histories and so these artists in the eighties were all really kind of at the forefront of all of that. It was a really exciting time.

Christine: So what was the mood like that....

KG: Ok. So the mood... I think at the time if we think about it in I think it was 1984 there was legislation...Federal legislation that was passed that actually was a Sex Discrimination Act in 1980...I think it was [19]84.

Christine: It rings a bell, yes.

KG: And so that meant that there was a lot of kind of affirmative action going on. There was lot funding through Australia Council towards promoting and supporting women in the art...women in the arts and women practising art. I think that there was a kind of feeling as well that the sort of dominant sort of hegemony [laughs]. I hate to use that word here but the Art Gallery of Western Australia at that time perhaps wasn’t collecting women’s art...contemporary women’s art and I think that there was quite a feeling about really wanting to kind of stake a claim for the role of, and the importance of women and women in the arts. So it was...I think a very energetic, dynamic very active. I mean these were women who were very passionate, so yes I think it was...I think it was a very exciting time

Christine: And you’re right, it was the Federal Sex Discrimination Act passed 1984, a raft of affirmative actions addressing discrimination against women in the workforce. Thank you Sara, nice to get that.

KG: Yes.

Christine: Confirmed, so I assume this was a very dynamic period. What impact did it have on the industry as a whole?

KG: Yes, that’s right. Well look I think that you know, through exhibitions that they ran through symposia, through forums, through the connections that they made across the state and around Australia, you know that’s what I...that’s the sense that I get from looking at this archive; how this criss-crossing of correspondence across the country around ways to support women in the arts and I think that what it did was stimulate women’s creative practice at that time and these are women who went on to forge really successful careers in the arts either as curators, as writers, as publishers...

Christine: Who are some of the names?

KG: Well people like...I mean Terri-Ann White for instance. She ended up being Director of UWA Publishing. She ran Arcane Bookshop, really prominent figure. Artists like Jo Darbyshire, Penny Bovell, there’s a huge range of artists who now really significant in terms of the West Australian kind of cultural landscape and they were...they were there at...on that first committee of ARTEMIS. They were there deciding what their constitution should look like; you know, what are their aims and ambitions. They were there setting up the symposia and they had a weekly or not a weekly, I think it was a monthly newsletter that ARTEMIS published. And even just looking through that, it gives you a real glimpse into just how dynamic they were and the types of things that they were doing but on the cover of almost every newsletter, is a...there’s an artwork by one of these wonderful women arts: Jo Darbyshire, Penny Bovell and like these wonderful artworks that they reproduced on these newsletters and I don’t know that they’ve been exhibited anywhere else. It’s just...yes....

Christine: You studied fine arts didn’t you?

KG: I did, I did! So in fact in 1992, I started in art history, fine arts at UWA [laughs] and I guess I didn’t realise it because ARTEMIS was disbanded in 1990 because the funding had dried up which is...which is kind of a bit of a sad story really but the funding had dried up so they no longer had the ability to sort of run the office and run the gallery and all of that stuff that they were doing, but I guess you know, I was actually taught by a lot of these women.

Christine: Yes.

KG: Yes, so they were teaching in art history. They were teaching women’s art history. They were teaching feminist art practice, you know all of this stuff and so I think it really did shape the curriculum and it really did shape the kind of landscape that set...laid the path I suppose for the 1990s, for education, for...in the creative industries.

Christine: Yes...that’s...see that’s great that you were kind of at the end of it all and...

KG: Right, yes.

Christine: Yes, and that was the legacy.

It’s 22 minutes past two[pm].

I’ve got Dr Kate Gregory in the studios, Battye Historian.

We’re talking about ARTEMIS, the Women’s Art Forum. Now it’s funny because this is...this is minor in comparison to the entire story but when I was young, I went to St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox School in Dianella because I was bullied at my first school and my friend and I were the captains of ARTEMIS. It was red faction and we were the only faction to have two female captains. It was the first time it had happened in the history of the school.

KG: [Laughs] Well done, fantastic!

Christine: [Laughs] Yes, which is pretty cool. And she’s the goddess of wild animals and hunting and I later learned that she was the only female goddess to not marry and she was believed to be asexual. Didn’t know that when I was in school but I was like ‘yeeah wild animals, great..hunting!’.

So what...

KG: Was that right...great! What an amazing story, that is fantastic! And ARTEMIS, yes obviously Greek goddess, strong, strong female figure but as well as that, the name was chosen because it was a pun. ARTEMIS [pronounced as ART-E-MISS].

Christine: [Surprised] Aaaahhhhh!

KG: An ART-E-MISS. They were, you know...missed!

Christine: Wasn’t because they were wild animals or they were hunting for...no [laughs].

KG: All of that, all of that female goddess, strength and all of the things that ARTEMIS stood for, so yes that was why the name was actually chosen.

Christine: ART-E-MISS. Ahhh I’ll take it. I think that’s pretty good.

KG: [Laughs]

Christine: So, how did the group help to improve opportunities for women in art?

KG: Yes, well look I think that they were quite politicised so...even Jo Darbyshire and Penny Bovell were sort of involved with Guerrilla Girl acts who for instance there was an exhibition at the Art Gallery and I think it was about [19]89 of Van Gogh’s Irises and other masterpieces that had been acquired by Alan Bond and they had this kind of...ahhh what would you call it...it was kind of, well it was an installation which basically stained the water fountain outside of AGWA [Art Gallery of Western Australia] red as in blood because Bond had of course been...had business dealings with Pinochet’s Chile and of course at that time there were huge massacres going on in Chile so they were very highly politicised. I think that they were really advocating for women’s art to be collected by the major collection and I think that started to happen.

Betty Churcher was the Director of the Art Gallery for about three or four years at the end of the eighties at that time and she definitely started to acquire more women’s art and so it was partly about that but I think also to kind of raise the opportunities around...for women in the broader arts sector so and I think that certainly did happen. The whole landscaped changed. I think a lot of these women as I said went on to be very prominent in all sorts of fields in the broad creative industries.

Christine: Yes.

KG: Yes.

Christine: And Terri-Ann White recently set up her own publishing outfit, ‘Upswell’.

KG: Aaahhh yes.

Christine: Yes, which I was reading about and it’s a deal with Penguin Random House and they will reflect why it’s interesting books and distinctive voices.

So, yes they’ve all gone on to do different things which is just great. And you know it so fluently and you shared it with us which I really enjoy.

Now I’m glad that they did great things for art but I wished that the paid child care for women [laughs] had kind of stayed on but that’s ok we can’t have it all.

KG: Yes, look that was amazing and I think that is obviously...that issue is still so relevant [laughs].

Christine: Mmmm. Shows how far ahead of their time they were.

Now I am about to speak to our ABC reporter Sam Carmody who is going to reveal a very personal story about his family which he discovered after he was at Christmas lunch or a Christmas meal I should say and they started talking about the Bussell family. Now you have a massive archive on this family don’t you?

KG: Yes, we do. We do and a lot of the papers and private archives that we have are the ones that would have been used to actually find the evidence for...

Christine: What he’s about to talk about...

KG: What he’s about to talk about, so the archives are yes, they’re hugely important and very complex and rich and yes I think it would be great to delve into it more and certainly with this family...with the Bussell family, I mean people like Emma-Clare Bussell I know who’s had a lot of interest in the archive as well. They actually...is a descendant from...in the Bussell family. It also...you know the Aboriginal people, the Webb family and others who really have another side to the story.

Christine: He’s gone out and spoken to the elders. We’re going to hear from them as well. Yes, it’s really interesting.

So let’s bookmark that one as well. Maybe we can follow on from Sam’s story.

Kate, thanks for your time. Go and enjoy your weekend.

KG: Thanks Christine, lovely.

Christine: Dr Kate Gregory, Battye Historian from the State Library of WA guiding us through the ARTEMIS Women’s Art Forum.

END OF INTERVIEW