Tim Ross on Vivienne Binns

In my podcast series Constant, the inspiration for the stories came from the book Australian Painters of the 70s. One of the most striking aspects about the book is the lack of women represented in the pages. I spoke with Deborah Hart, Henry Dalrymple Head Curator of Australian Art at the National Gallery of Australia, about why this was a sign of the times, as well as its relevance to the Gallery’s Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now exhibition.

TIM ROSS: So if you flip through the pages of the book that inspired this podcast series you’ll find lots of great painters, but they’re pretty much all men.

DEBORAH HART: That’s right, there are only two women represented in that book. There are a lot of really great artists included, but it is a sad to look back and think of the artists who have been left out. Women like Leslie Dumbrell and Virginia Cuppaidge — incredible painters, as well as artists working in different media, who were really doing great work during that era, both of whom are in our exhibition Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now. One of the arguments at the time was that it was about works of quality. In fact, the 1970s is actually a pivot point for our exhibition because there was so much going on.

So why were the ladies left out?

That’s a good question. I think there was discrimination against women. It’s hard for us to imagine in this day and age that artists — as well as women in other professions like teachers — were expected to go back into the home once they got married.

During the 1970s, there was a very active group of women and many of them were feminists. In the Know My Name exhibition, we recognise feminists in the 1970s for the work they did in pushing the boundaries, in questioning what women’s work was, and that women’s art could be so many different things. There was a democratisation of the arts. In the exhibition we have a big wall of posters. The art of poster making isn’t really as alive today as it used to be, but then it was really about a spirit of collectivism, and a lot of the issues that women were raising in these incredible colourful posters were about Aboriginal land rights and environmentalism. A lot of these issues are still current today and are still playing out, but those women in the 1970s really set the groundwork.

Women at the idea of dissolving of art and life was an interesting theme in a number of women’s practices. Look at Vivienne Binns, for example, and her work Tower of Babel, which is in the national collection. In this work she was very active in community art and she brought artists from different walks of life. It’s like a mini-exhibition in itself. She gave artists — including professionals, amateurs, family and friends — each a box to work with. And it brought together many voices and questions the idea of whether art is about Artists with a capital A. It is about looking at different ways that people could express their creativity.

The very nature of what Vivienne Binns did and continues to do, is that something you think men would be doing?

I think it was quite particular to what she was doing. What’s interesting is, in the 1960s for example, she caused quite a stir with her first exhibition at Watters Gallery, where she painted the male and female sexual anatomy — people were up in arms. She was in her twenties at the time and had a lot of courage. It really came from a place of deep thinking about identity. This is interesting to look at from the women’s points of view, because of course there had been many men working with the idea of the body as a subject.

Why do you think Vivienne is so important? What makes her so special?

I think Viv really pushed the boundaries. She was really coming into her own in the 1960s and 1970s when there was a very dynamic atmosphere. The Whitlam government was in charge, 1975 was International Women’s Year, and Viv was very much a part of the notion of retrieving women’s histories and stories. In 1975 Janine Burke at the University of Melbourne curated the exhibition Australian Women Artists: 1840–1940, and suddenly there was the sense where women like Viv could say: ‘we’re connected to this history and this idea of lineages across time’. I think her importance lies both within her own art practice and this work with community. It’s about that dynamic exchange through what art can be.

Constant is a five-part podcast series presented by design enthusiast Tim Ross in partnership with the National Gallery.

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