The Great Divide: feminist art practice across generations and geography

‘What's Your Feminism?’ Poster paste-up, Johnston Street, Collingwood, 2018. Photo by Lisa Mansfield.

A MEL&NYC LIVE DISCUSSION EVENT & ZINE POSTER PROJECT

Coinciding with the 2018 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition presented by the National Gallery of Victoria, MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art, an extensive program of events was presented by leading Melbourne organisations and communities exploring culture, politics, business and the everyday experience as seen through the eyes of New Yorkers and Australians.

The Women’s Art Register (MEL) and (RE)Present (NYC) connected in an intergenerational dialogue and a collaborative feminist zine poster. A live, interactive session at the Richmond Theatrette on 11 August addressed the need to communicate more broadly with each other about our different ages and experience as feminists and artists. Speakers included Vanessa Godden, Tassia Joannides, Juliette Peers and Caroline Phillips from the Women’s Art Register, in conversation with Nancy Azara, Rachel Steiberg and Emily Harris from (RE)Present.

(RE)Present is a non-hierarchical round table meeting based on the 1970’s feminist movement derived consciousness-raising circle, and designed to foster a broad dialogue across generations of artists interested in contemporary feminist concerns. (RE)Present grew out of a call for artists and others who had participated in the New York Feminist Art Institute (1979–1990).

‘What's Your Feminism?’ zine poster call-out, 2018. Design by Lisa Mansfield.

The zine poster, designed by Lisa Mansfield, was generated via an online call for responses to the question ‘What’s Your Feminism?’. Selected drawings were meshed with text from (RE)Present in a collaborative response. Our poster was pasted at 100 locations in inner Melbourne and distributed in NYC to members of the (RE)Present collective. We were contacted by the Jessie Street Women’s Library who were interested in including our poster in their collection, so we donated one copy to their archive in Sydney. FARC (QLD), a new feminist collective, were inspired by our poster and then created their own workshop based on our theme of ‘What’s Your Feminism’, acknowledging the support of W.A.R. and the MEL&NYC project.

MEL&NYC was generously supported by the Victorian Government.