Collective Women: Feminist Art Archives from the 1970s to the 1990s

Collective Women: Feminist Art Archives from the 1970s to the 1990s
The Women’s Gallery
From the Women’s Art Archive 1980
Women’s Art Exhibition Posters Archive
E H McCormick Research Library
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of Juliet Batten, 2008

Exhibition Details

At the height of the second wave feminist movement in Aotearoa New Zealand women artists campaigned both for equality within the arts and for wider socio-political change. Many also diligently recorded their activities. Performance works were filmed, interviews conducted, letters demanding action sent and received, meetings minuted and manifestos written and circulated. Ideas were chronicled in scrapbooks, protest marches photographed, posters designed, and publications like Broadsheet and Spiral established and distributed.

Creating an enduring record and preserving these ‘memory-traces’ for future generations is something that feminist artists and scholars have engaged with for decades. Systematic archiving or ‘outrage in order’ as Kate Eichhorn describes it in The Archival Turn in Feminism (2014) is apparent in the carefully collated documentation that makes up the cultural artefacts of the movement both here and internationally. The proliferation of material during this period demonstrates the way in which feminist print culture both supported and sustained the women’s movement.

Ensuring these collections found a place within the historic record was also a conscious strategy of many feminist initiatives:

Given the historic pattern that has conspired towards the invisibility of women’s art, the project is clearly an affirmative action to ensure that documentation material is retained, in order that references to women artists can continue beyond this particular generation.  – Lita Barrie, Women’s Art Archive Interview Project (1984)

Date
Curated by
Catherine Hammond and Caroline McBride
Location
Ground level

Related Content

View Artwork

Not on display

Mere and Siulolovao, Otago Peninsula
Mere and Siulolovao, Otago Peninsula

Robin White

Production date
1978
Medium
screenprint
Size (h x w)
617 x 385 mm
Credit line
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2004
Accession no
2004/19
View Archive
Women's Art Exhibition Posters
Women's Art Exhibition Posters
Production date
1979-1990
Credit line
E H McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of Juliet Batten, 2008
Accession no
RC2008/4
View Archive
Women's Art Archive Interview Project
Women's Art Archive Interview Project
Production date
1982-1984
Credit line
E H McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of Lita Barrie, 1984
Accession no
RC2002/10
View Archive
Juliet Batten Archive
Juliet Batten Archive
Production date
1976-2008
Credit line
E H McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of Juliet Batten, 2009
Accession no
RC2009/7
View Archive
Feminist Art Networkers Archive
Feminist Art Networkers Archive
Production date
1982-1987
Credit line
E H McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of Feminist Art Networkers, 1990
Accession no
RC2003/2
View Archive
Marti Friedlander Archive
Marti Friedlander Archive
Production date
1955-2017
Credit line
E H McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, on loan from the Gerrard and Marti Friedlander Charitable Trust, 2002
Accession no
RC2007/11