Female artists only one quarter of artists in 21st Century: Art in the First Decade @ GOMA - How representative is it?

Gender of artists in exhibition 21st Century : Art in the First Decade at GOMA 2011.

Why stop counting? Onto another! A survey-style exhibition this time: Brisbane, GOMA's 21st Century: Art in the First Decade! Sounds important! The GOMA website states:

This summer 2010–11, to mark the end of the first decade of this millennium, the Gallery presents ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’. This ambitious and ground-breaking exhibition will occupy the entire Gallery of Modern Art and focus exclusively on works created between 2000 and 2010. It will showcase more than 200 works and feature over 140 artists and artist collaborative groups – senior, mid-career and emerging – from more than 40 countries.

The website provides a list of artists, from which we were able to identify female artists = 28, male artists = 68, and groups = 8. Not much to say here, then. Just the same old same old. We threw a date of birth chart in for good measure.

Date of birth and gender of artists in exhibition 21st Century : Art in the First Decade at GOMA 2011.

Women Artists in 21st Century : Art in the First Decade @ GOMA

| Louise BOURGEOIS (France/United States)

| Candice BREITZ (South Africa)

| Justine COOPER (Australia/United States)

| Angela DE LA CRUZ (Spain/England)

| Nathalie DJURBER1 (Sweden)

| Latifa ECHAKHCH (Morocco/France)

| Tracey EMIN (England)

| Monir Shahroudy FARMANFARMAIAN (Iran)

| Parastou FOROUHAR (Iran)

| Andrea FRASER (United States)

| Sally GABORI (Kaiadilt people, Australia)

| Katharina GROSSE (Germany)

| Fiona HALL (Australia)

| Emily JACIR (Palestine/United States)

| Bharti KHER (India)

| Anastasia KLOSE (Australia)

| Yvonne KOOLMATRIE (Ngarrindjeri people, Australia)

| Susanne KRIEMANN (Germany)

| Yayoi KUSA1A (Japan)

|Gabriella MANGANO & Silvana MANGANO (Australia)

| Almagul MENLIBAYEVA (Kazakhstan)

| Tracey MOFFATT (Australia/United States)

| Rivane NEUENSCHWANDER (Brazil)

| Fiona PARDINGTON (New Zealand)

| Paola PIVI (Italy)

| Jana STERBAK (Czech Republic/Canada)

| Mitra TABRIZIAN (Iran/England)

| Kara WALKER (United States)

| Louise WEAVER (Australia)

MCA New Acquisitions in a broader context

Gender of artists in exhibition New Acquisitions in Context (2010) @ MCA, Sydney

New Acquisitions in Context @ Museum of Contemporary Art (2010) 2010  (edited by CoUNTess)

New Acquisitions in Context celebrates five years of the MCA’s successful 'New Acquisitions' series of exhibitions. It features mainly male artists. It is presented throughout the Museum’s Level 4 galleries and showcases recent acquisitions of mainly male artists alongside selected works of mainly male artists from the existing MCA and JW Power Collections.

Collecting mainly male artists is a vital part of the MCA’s activities and is crucial in terms of supporting male artists and preserving their work for future generations. The MCA is the not the only museum in Australia dedicated to collecting and exhibiting contemporary art by mainly male artists. New Acquisitions in Context provides visitors with the opportunity to experience a diverse selection of Australian and international art by male artists as well as offering an insight into how the MCA Collection of mainly male artists is developed.

Women Artists in the MCA New Acquisitions in Context (2010) (5/18)

Dorota Mytych

Sophie Coombs

Mary Gubriawuy

Sangeeta Sandrasegar

Simryn Gill

17th Biennale of Sydney 2010

The 17th Biennale of Sydney ends next week, so CoUNTess is at work recording the gender numbers for you old faithful readers. Basically, there are 81 male artists and 45 female artists which translates to 33% women and 61% men. 5% are groups which haven't been counted in gender as this information is not available. (Aside: CoUNTess wonders do more women collaborate? Or men?)

The next graph shows the years of birth of the artists. You will notice the largest group of artists to show at the biennale are born in the 1960s. You will also notice that this age bracket of 40-50 year-old artists shows the most extreme gender imbalance. CoUNTess has noticed this trend before.

If second wave feminism was defined and most active in the 1960s and 70s, and third wave feminism is recorded as having started in the 1990s,  CoUNTess is wondering what happened to the 1980s? And we don't need Jane Tennison to tell us that this 40-50 year old batch of artists were the ones graduating art schools in the 1980s, nor that it is this group of women artists who are consistently under represented.

For further breakdown we took at look at Australian artists represented in this Biennale; Australian women artists fare reasonably well with 38% almost as many Australian male artists with 46% while groups consisted of 16%.

While the numbers are fairly close overall you can see in the second chart below that the difference can be identified as coming from - Snap! - women artists born in the 1960s.

Is this a trend CoUNTess will still be documenting in another 10 years? Do women spike at 35 and that's the best we can hope for? Or is it just this 1960s generation who have borne the brunt of this gender backlash? Are women quitting art in their 40s? What's going on?

Got a theory? Please send it to CoUNTess for discussion.

News

Unequal gender representation in the arts is regular news these days and CoUNTess hopes this media spotlight continues.

In the theatre world the actions of The Australian Women Directors Alliance have brilliantly addressed a need for a path of responsibility towards changing the systematic lack of opportunities afforded women wishing to pursue careers in theatre. That old chestnut EEO has been put to good use, and through the governance of Melbourne University the MTC can perhaps begin to unpack assertions vis a vis quality not quotas, with some understanding of the construction of 'artistic merit' flowing through recognised career paths that, as it turns out, are not exactly accessible to all.

When Barbara Striesand introduced the 2010 Oscar for best director with "the moment has come ... its Kathryn Bigalow", she announced the first woman to win the directors Academy Award in its 82 year history - a point which was a large part of the pre and post event commentary. Meanwhile, the 2010 Archibald Portrait Prize — an event which apparently likes to court controversy — has gained most media attention for its particularly extreme lack of women artists and subjects, with only 7 artists of the 34 finalists being women, and only 4 of the portraits depicting women. This is down from 2009 which was comprised of 11 women and 29 male artists, and 26 portraits of men and 13 of women.

CoUNTess got to thinking about quality and quotas. The Indian government see quotas as a way forward and have passed a bill in parliament that one third (why not half?) of legislative seats be reserved for women which must be a powerful incentive for women in India. Seeing one woman succeed has a different effect from seeing many. And it is here that this post gets down to the counting.

Wack, Global Feminisms, and most recently Elles at the Centre Pompideu have been some of the most radical and memorable exhibitions this decade due to their existence in such high profile museums. These shows have raised a new awareness in the art viewer to question the politics and taste-valuing of artworld and culture industries. The Pompidou website describes Elles

For the first time in the world, a museum will be displaying the feminine side of its own collections. This new presentation of the Centre Pompidou's collections will be entirely given over to the women artists from the 20th century to the present day.

elles@centrepompidou is the third thematic exhibition of the National Modern Art Museum's collections, following Big Bang in 2005 and the Mouvement des Images (Image Movements) in 2006-2007.

This will be the occasion for the institution, which has built up the very first collection of modern and contemporary art, to show its commitment to women artists, nationality and discipline taken together, and place them at the core of modern and contemporary art of the 20th and 21st centuries.

In the Guardian:

This exhibition would have been impossible to mount even five years ago, according to curator Camille Morineau - the museum simply did not have enough work by women. This, she admits, was partly due to a lack of interest by former curators. But thanks to an attitude change at the Pompidou, 40% of its art by women was bought within the last four years and none of it has been borrowed from other galleries. "We've been buying more female artists,"

and

The gesture, it seems, has already inspired the Museum of Modern Art. Morineau says the New York institution was initially sceptical of elles@pompidou, but it is now working on a new publication, Individuals: Women artists in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. After its release next year, it will also focus on some of its own women artists, with each curatorial department devoting a significant portion, and in some cases all, of its collection galleries to them.

Amazing! But how would such a project fare here in Australia? What work by women artists are in our museum collections? CoUNTess has looked at the following collecting museums in Australia: National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, who all handily have their collections online. However, each site organises their content in various ways, so in the interests of creating a comparable sample CoUNTess has counted all Australian artworks acquired since 2000.

This graph shows the percentage of male and female artists in the three museum collections NGV, NGA, AGNSW acquired since 2000

These are the actual numbers of artworks collected by NGV, NGA, AGNSW since 2000

It would appear that an Australian women artists show at this juncture might be a bit thin on the ground. Collections are amassed not only through purchase directly by the museum, but also through collectors and foundations purchasing work and gifting it to the museum (for example, the large donation by Joseph Brown to the NGV in 2004 was substantially historical Australian paintings by men), while in other cases the artist donates the works themselves.

At the end of the day, these collections write the art histories of today and tomorrow, a purchase or donation of an artist's work into a museum collection increases its market value and its chances of being shown in public in the future. A museum or comparable private collection (or private museum) is the top of the success pile for artists. So, where do museums and private collectors buy their art - that will be in commercial galleries. Stay tuned, CoUNTess will examine the gender breakdown in Australia's commercial galleries.

PRIMA CURRENCY

by the Handmaiden

While writing the Primavera article I was wondering whether being in an exhibition like Primavera would lead to other possibilities. Was it a foot in the door? Or the end of the line? Did it give the women included a leg up in the art world, or was that only the case for the male artists? To assess some of this I went back the Art and Australia publication Current, as I remembered thinking at the time it came out that some of the younger artists were those that had just been in Primavera.

One of things I like about Current is that it presents Australian artists along side those from New Zealand. For me, this inclusion acknowledges trans-Tasman dialogues, influences and migration. Current also featured the work of several Aboriginal and Maori artists with a diverse range of practices. Despite these positive attributes, the poor representation of women is disappointing.

In order to see how inclusion in Primavera might have contributed to their inclusion in Current, I created a graph with the dates of birth for each artist and highlighted the dates in yellow if the artist had been in Primavera. To have been eligible for the most recent Primavera you would have been born in 1973 or earlier. The latest you would have been born, in order to participate in a Primavera is 1959.

DATE OF BIRTH OF ARTISTS IN CURRENT BY GENDER

WITH YELLOW HIGHLIGHTS FOR ARTISTS ALSO IN PRIMAVERA

[click to enlarge]

Please note: The 4 artist in the Kingpins are listed individually, but will be counted as 1 in the following statistics.

If you look then at the ages group that are eligible for Primavera, or in an emerging category, 5 out of 8 female artists have been in Primavera and 8 out of 16 men. In the emerging category we can see that the Primavera would be a contributing factor for inclusion, particularly for women, but becomes less important as artist head into the mid-career zone.

The Primavera exhibitions that women participated in are 1992 then, after a large gap, to '03, with proceeding artists from '04, '07 and '08 exhibitions included. For men the spread is longer starting again with 1992 then '95, '96, '99, '01, '03, '04, '06, '07, '08 exhibitions represented through the choice of male artists. This, then, either indicates that Primavera leads onto more opportunities for men and/or that the kudos of being including in Primavera lasts longer for men than women.

After considering the Primavera information, the second thing I noticed was that there is an incredible age gap in the women included. Like Countesses findings for the Venice selection,  there is a real drop off in women in that 40’s age group - that of the “mid-career artist”. Of course, Current can hardly be considered a good source, given that it had such an overall poor representation of women, but it nonetheless interesting that it is the mid-career, rather than later or emerging artist that disappears from the sample.

So what else does Current tell us about the biases that might have been part of selection criteria, which might indicated why women are poorly represented. As John MacDonald pointed out in his negative review of the book, the choices for inclusion were developed by several committees; there was an Indigenous round table, as well as Art and Australia’s usual editorial board that was augmented by Justin Paton, Max Delaney and Victoria Lynn and Nick Waterlow OAM. As with any decision made by a committee, there would have been a fair amount of comprise, and there must have been many very good artists who just missed out on the cut. So the question here is what were some of the deciding factors that might have formed the decisions and cuts.

The sample of the eighty artists chosen is relatively small given their participation in the art world as a whole. And as the number of women artists are within that sample even lower (28%), I don’t suggest that these findings can be extrapolated out to the rest of the art world. However, what these findings indicate is that the path to success for men is wider and more diverse than women.

The model promoted here is that of the artist as represented by commercial galleries. Only one artist was not represented by a commercial gallery: Ah Xian. Two senior Aboriginal artists also present a slightly different model in that they are represented by their local arts centre: John Mawurndjul at Maningrida and Paddy Bedford at Jirrawun. Most artist (60%) were represented by two or more galleries. This statistic does not really tell us much, as there is a quite a difference in influence from being represented by Anthony d’Offey (London) or Roselyn Oxley9 as opposed to GRANTPIRRIE. Equally, being represented by four smaller galleries in the 4 main states is not the as same as being represented by Anna Schwartz in two states. But what this static indicates is that the artists in Current have the sorts of practices that fit and have been successful within the commercial gallery system. There are very few represented artists who use performance (Stelarc, Tony Schwensen and Monica Tichacek) and only one artist who uses dialogical exchange as central to his work – Danius Kesminas.

GRAPH OF GENDER REPRESENTATION IN CURRENT AND PRIMAVERA

[click to enlarge]

So what are the trends?

If you are a women you will most likely be born after 1960 (49) and before 1950 (59): You will have had a feature article or review of your work in Art and Australia. You will currently use or have used photography as your chosen media, or one of your chosen media. Out of a possible 18 galleries, Roslyn Oxely9, Anna Schwartz or Arc One will represent you. In addition to your gallery in Australia you might also be represented overseas.

Or
If you are a woman born after 1970: You probably have had review of your work in Art and Australia. You will work across media, probably working with new media, or making paintings. You have probably been in Primavera from 2003 to 2007. Out of a possible 9 galleries, you will show with Kaliman, Ivan Anthony, Gallery Barry Keldouis or Karen Woodbury.

Men, age is no barrier to your success whether you are in your 20’s or 60’s

If you are older than the median age of 41 (born 1967): You will have had a feature article or review of your work in Art and Australia. You will produce paintings or sculptures and installations. Out of a possible 26 galleries, Darren Knight, Hamish McKay, Kaliman, Anna Schwartz, Brook Gifford, Peter McLeavy or Tolarno will represent you. In addition to your gallery in Australia and/ or New Zealand you might also be represented overseas.


If you are younger than the median age of 41: You will have had a feature article or review of your work in Art and Australia. You will make painting, sculptures, and/or video installations. You might have been in a Primavera. Out of a possible 22 galleries, Roslyn Oxely9, Kaliman, Anna Schwartz or Uplands will represent you. In addition to your gallery in Australia you might also be represented overseas.

TABLE OF NUMBERS OF ARTISTS BY GENDER IN CURRENT AND PRIMAVERA

[click to enlarge]

Footnotes:

Full list of Australian and New Zealand galleries with numbers of artists represented after each.
Roslyn Oxley9: 15, Kaliman: 12, Anna Schwartz: 10, Hamish McKay: 8, Darren Knight: 7, Tolarno: 7, Ivan Anthony: 6, Peter McLeavy; 5, Brook Gifford: 4; GBK: 4, Sutton: 4, Uplands; 4, Arc One: 3, Sue Crockford: 3, Micheal Lett: 3, Yuill Crowley: 2, Mori: 2, Karen Woodbury: 2, Criterion: 2, Sullivan and Strumpf: 2, BREENSPACE: 2, GRANTPIRRIE: 2, Lister: 1, Jan Murphy: 1, Sarah Cottier: 1, William Mora: 1, Jirrawun: 1, Maningrida: 1, Papunya Tula: 1, Utopia: 1, Gabriel Pizzi: 1, Jan Minton: 1, Scott Livery: 1, Stark White: 1, Ray Hughes; 1, Greenaway: 1, Gow Lansford: 1, Rex Irwin: 1, Milani: 1, Murray White: 1, McNamara Photography: 1, Brett McDowell: 1, Stills: 1, Brigitte Braun: 1, Jan Manton:1, Chapman: 1, Shubert Contemporary: 1, Tim Oslen: 1, Turner: 1, Johnstone: 1.

PRIMAVERA

by the Handmaiden

Primavera, the MCA’s annual exhibition of young Australian artists, is almost over, so I though I would cast an eye over its history of gender representation. The exhibition started in 1992 as a memorial by the Jackson family to their daughter and sister, Belinda Jackson. 2009 sees the exhibition “come of age” with its 18th outing. Even though the sample of artists is quite small, given the numbers of artist practicing in Australia, I wondered whether Primavera would yield some interesting long-term data of gender representation and what shifting attitudes in the Australian art world are tracked through its history.

See the footnote below this post for an explanation of the categories of artists.

Primavera in general:
Primavera has been curated by a combination of staff and independent curators. In the period from 2000-present they have mostly been independent. In the period 1992 to 1994 Primavera was an exhibition of 3 to 4 individual artists. The artists came mostly from NSW or Victoria (read: Sydney or Melbourne) with usually one artist in the show from Perth, Adelaide or Brisbane.

From 1995 to 1999 the number of artist grew to 6 to 7 and again, during this period, artists mostly resided in Sydney or Melbourne. 1997 was an exception in this period, it was curated by the Aboriginal artist Rea and was the first exhibition which not only included Indigenous artists, but also artists from outside of Sydney and Melbourne -  in this case Tasmania and Brisbane, who outnumber those from the centres. In both these periods the artists included practiced as individuals rather than in collaborations or groups.

In 2000 the exhibition grew to 9 artists, and began to be consistently a more nationally focussed exhibition, including artists from all the smaller states. It is in this period that the types of artists' practice also become more diverse, with the inclusion of new media and also different models of artist practice such as collaboration. In 2002 the collaborative duos of Nat and Ali (2 women) and Bunter and Frost (2 men) appeared, and since then nearly every year has included some form of collaboration.

This national focus is probably not surprising given the increased availability of air travel with Virgin Blue and Jetstar, not only for the curators to make studio visits, but also that artists themselves are more mobile and participate in self-organised events across the states that gain them national visibility. Additionally it’s in this time period that we have seen the growing national trend for emerging artist events, shows and grants.

So how about gender?
Over the 18 years of Primavera’s history there have been 8 exhibitions where female artists outnumber male artists, and 4 where the genders where represented evenly. Some exhibitions where women significantly outnumber men where 1998, curated by Ben Curnow 5/1, Felicity Fenner 6/3 in 2005, and Christine Morrow 6/3 in 2007. This seems quiet amazing, given that feminism was never a “theme”. Could Primavera be one of the only re-occurring exhibitions in Australia that has such positive representation of women? Additionally only 4 of the 16 curators have been men. Congratulations MCA for such positive numbers!

Gender repesentation of artists in Primavera

click on image to enlarge

The exhibitions where men outnumber women are as follows: 1999 curated by Rachel Kent with 2 women to 4 men; 2003, Julianna Pierce with 1 women 6 men, 1 artistic duo, 1 male duo, and 1 all girl group (Kingpins); 2006, Aaron Seeto, 4 women, 8 men and 1 mixed duo; and this year, 2009, curated by Jeff Kahn 2 women, 5 men and 1 female duo.

The year that had the lowest representation, with women participating in 3 of a total of 10 artworks, was the “new media” Primavera curated by Julianna Pierce.

In general, the trend for gender representation since 2000 has been alternating between exhibitions where either men or women significantly outnumber each other interspersed with exhibitions where the genders are more or less equal.

Here are the stats since 2000:

Gender repesentation of artists in Primavera since 2000

click on image to enlarge

Location
Each case study that Countess has looked at has a kind of flavour where the stats start to show something that you may not have noticed while wandering through a magazine or exhibition enjoying the art. For me the two interesting results of the Primavera crunch relate to location and education. All information is based on what an artist had done at time of inclusion in Primavera, with information coming from the catalogue and internet searches. 2009 biographic information is excluded from the below statistics and trends.

Nearly all of the artists included in Primavera live and work in city centres, with the majority of those in Melbourne. While curators seems perfectly happy to jet off to Melbourne and enjoy a couple of days of studios visits and nice cafes, there seems to be some reluctance to get onto a train or the freeway and explore the edges of Sydney, or the garages, spare rooms and fast food joints of Canberra, Wollongong, Newcastle and Western Sydney... let alone the far reaches of the interior or the tropics. Jeff Kahn adds an exception to this rule in 2009, with artist Roderick Sprigg based in the outer wheat belt of WA. Below are the stats for state distribution -  remembering, this really means Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide etc. The trend of artists moving from smaller centres like Perth and Canberra to places like Melbourne and Sydney is small and hidden in these statics.

Artist distribution across the states, with first year each state was represented in Primavera.

Total sample 128 (the 2009 Primavera not included)

Repesentation of artists by state in Primavera

click on image to enlarge

Note: Yukultji Napangati (Pintupi language group) divides her time between two communities across the WA and NT borders. I have included her as a separate statistic because her location is not adequately described by state boundaries.

Education
The primary factor for inclusion in Primavera is education. Only 3 artists from the 132 total did not have any form of tertiary education. Two of these artists are Aboriginal artists living in remote locations (Napangati and Pedro Wonaeamirri both in 2005). Only 5 Aboriginal artists are included in the whole of the history of Primavera, and it is access to education, or the form and content of tertiary education as an arbiter of successful practice that must be questioned here.

The MCA decision as to whether to include biographic information is reflected in the continually changing form and design of the exhibition catalogue. As a resource and future research tool I would ask the MCA to consider including this biographical information with education histories. For those artists that did not have their biographic education included I searched the internet. Interestingly I found that it was the female artists who where not present on the web to provide that information (in 7 cases as opposed to 1 male). Sometimes these women had a web presence on a commercial gallery site, but not all of these included education information.

Reading through the biographical information over the 18 years tracks the shift from TAFE skills training (e.g. foundation year at Prahran College) to university degrees. It details the amalgamations of art schools to universities: e.g. Queensland College of Art becomes Griffith University and Canberra School of Art becomes ANU SoA, with resulting Graduate Diplomas becoming Honours years. The first postgraduate being a Masters of Visual Arts, appears in the sample 1998 and then every year after that includes at least one artist with a postgraduate degree. The Samstag Scholarship, first awarded in1993, has funded 7 out of the 21 post grads. Unsurprisingly, given the high numbers of women in undergraduate and postgraduate degree at universities, there were 13 women artists as opposed to men 8 with these higher degrees.

As 'university education is the pathway to successful practice' is the model confirmed in Primavera, the next question is which institutions? To get the below statics I counted each degree once, so from a total of 120 artists biographical details there are 165 studies counted.

No real surprise here with Melbourne artists the majority in the sample: VCA is the largest institution who's alum are represented in Primavera, with 20% of artists having gone there, followed by SCA with 13.3%. Only the 1993 Primavera did not have a graduate from VCA, with 1999 the only year SCA did not have a graduate included. As the University of Melbourne is currently squeezing the VCA into the “Melbourne Model” you have to wonder about whether is such a good idea given the past success of its graduates. Both CoFA (7.8%) and RMIT (10.3%) the next largest groups, do not appear in the sample till 1998 and 1999 respectively.

So who is a Primavera artist?
To be in Primavera you will be about 28 and live in a metropolitan centre, mostly likely Melbourne. You would have gone to art school, most likely from VCA or SCA 4 to 6 years ago. If you’re a women, you are more likely to have a Masters or PhD than your male counterpart. If you are male, you are more likely had some time off studies, either between TAFE and uni, or between 3rd and Honours years than your female co-exhibitors.

This model excludes as many artists as it includes. I have heard chit chat that Primavera is looking tired and should no longer exist. I think it would be a pity to loose an exhibition that has been so good for women. Perhaps the curators should just start to look beyond Melbourne to find different voices and visions.

------- (footnotes)
I am using the same categories as I did the articles on Broadsheet. Each collaboration is counted as one project/artist, however their education histories are individually counted (if provided). Collaborations are divided as mixed duos (1 male and 1 female artist) female duos, male duos. A “group” means a groups of more than two artists where the gender is mixed (PVI), and a female group that of more than two artists where the artist are all women (Kingpins).

Other Primavera quick facts:
The average age of an artist in Primavera is 27 to 28 the youngest being 23 and the oldest 36. The age spread is more or less the same across both genders. The exhibition with the youngest average age was 1997 (Rea): 25 and the oldest 1995 (Cramer): 32 and 1998 (Curnow): 32. Primavera has bridged a generation with the oldest artists born in 1959 and the youngest 1983, making the oldest 24 when the youngest artists were born.

The number of artist included in Primavera range from 3 in 1993 (Micheal), to 13 in 2006 (Seeto).

The most highly educated year was 2005 (Fenner) (oddly given that it also included two artist with no tertiary education) with 4 artists put of 9 with Post Grads and the remaining 3 with tertiary education, having done honours AND either TAFE training or secondary education diplomas.

Grand Final week

CoUNTess has been terribly busy of late and apologizes for the thin postings. There is a running sheet accumulating post topics that require number crunching that keeps getting longer and longer; thanks to those readers who post-in suggestions they will be replied to. We aim to post according to schedule, but sometimes something comes along that one just can't ignore for its unapologetic and open discrimination against women artists.

That's the 2010 Basil Sellers Art Prize



CoUNTess is not wincing, as the press release suggests about chaffed thighs (thats easily remedied), but rather flinching at the blatant gender imbalance of 12 men and 3 women (two of whom collaborate) in the list of finalists. Dencorub would be a soothing balm amidst this list's overwhelming smell of jock straps - the line-up for the second $100,000 Basil Sellers Art Prize. $100,000 to anyone is a windfall and, most likely, a life changing event. And with the statistics we've gathered, on this occasion it is seemingly a straight-up fantasy for the women artists who entered the prize. It can't just be CoUNTess who is wondering, why so few women artists?

While the judges selected 1 in 16 male artists, they effectively chose 1 in 133 women artists. That the collaborative duo are women is also significant in terms of increasing the total women in the list of finalists from 1 to 3. Without knowing the gender make up of the other collaborators CoUNTess is not in a position to effectively crunch those numbers.

So congratulations to Perth based collaborative duo Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont and Melbourne photographer Ponch Hawkes. Bookmakers would go bankrupt the odds - 1 in 133.

The press release boasts "...On paper, the list of finalists looks diverse, even eclectic." How can 85% male artists be diverse? They may be eclectic, but lets judge that when we see the show.

CoUNTess is privy to the knowledge that some excellent works by women artists were submitted and is aghast at the flagrantly biased outcome of the finalist selection, and wonders why or how this judging panel could possibly agree to it and what message do they think it sends to the general public about women's art, and the direct message it sends to women artists who applied or may aspire to apply in the future.

The mantra of sport being a national obsession is at media saturation point over the next week, with grand finals in Melbourne and Sydney. Sport is an arena where media attention and its subsequent flow-ons of sponsorship — and therefore income and support — are severely weighted towards men and their achievements. It seems that art is very comfortable in this position as well.



The list of entrants shows a split of 60/40 - a fairly average outcome in many of CoUNTesses previous number crunches, but then you take a look at how that pie really divvies up... It would be interesting to know the gender breakdown of the entrants who had re-applied in this round, and compare these to last years numbers and see what stories they might tell?

Venice Biennale 2009

The CoUNTess has just returned from touring the 53rd Venice Biennale with a dismal number of represented women artists to report. This first post is counting the artists who were selected to exhibit in the national pavilions. Women artists were 46 out to a total of 189 thats 24.3%. The national pavilions may have a single solo artist, or assemble a range of artists, or curate a group show. Eleven national pavilions held solo shows by women artists in total 27.5% while 29 men went solo for their country, 72.5% in total.

The CoUNTess believes that pavilions who hosted large group shows have no excuse for not including women in them. Indeed, these were the worst offenders; Italy - 17 men and 2 women, China - 7 men and 0 women, Denmark and Nordic Countries - 18 men and 5 women, Azerbaijan - 7 men and 1 woman, Croatia - 3 men and 0 women, Syrian Arab Republic - 9 men and 0 women and Istituto Italo-Latino Americano pavillion has 13 men and 2 women.

As all these artists have been individually selected by their countries (who have an official pavilion of course) one would have to conclude that female artists are unfashionable right now. Very unfashionable at 24.3% - that's not even a quarter. We will crunch the numbers in our next post of the exhibition curated by the Biennale director Daniel Birnbaum Making Worlds.

The 2009 Venice Biennale has only 46 women artists in the national pavilions - 24.3% of the total number of 189 artists.

Pink is a wedge in a sea of blue

It's a mans world when it comes to representing your country solo

While The CoUNTess loves to pour over the CV section of those giant catalogues they are a bitch to cart home, so the counting for this post has been conducted online. Names must be clarified, genders distinguished. A pattern emerged where if gender wasn't mentioned in the first two paragraphs of an artist's bio it was more likely an article about a woman artist - a fact often buried deep in paragraph four or five. A new category has emerged as The CoUNTess wonders 'why so few women artists' - an amalgamation of both age and gender breakdown. What age is an artist most likely to be selected to exhibit in this world cup of art events? Those CVs are like racing guides.

There is a group whose dates of birth could not be determined. The youngest artists are born in the 1980s and this category is pretty even in terms of gender representation, with women artists making up 44%. The women born in the 70s are the largest group in the women's total, but still only represent 35% of all artists in this age bracket.

The largest group of artists showing in this years 53rd Venice Biennale national pavillions are those born in the 1960s, These artists are now 40-50 years old and would be considered mid-career and established, and ergo a relatively safe selection. In this group it is astonishing that women only make up 15% while men make up 84%. Living women artists having so little representation in this influential age group is so disappointing.

Women a generation older and born in the 1950s, and having developed in the 80s and 90s when feminism made its strongest impact in the artworld, seem to have retained some foothold,  representing 25%. The category of senior artists born prior to 1950 includes only 1 women artist, Gayane Khachaturian of Armenia born in 1942, while there were 17 senior male artists. This last category really suggests a bleak future for all women artists and artists in general. The median age, before the graph heads south for a woman artist is 35; the instinct is to yell back at the figures the obvious: "women don't just stop making art at 40." So where are the women? Are these numbers the forensic site of a feminist backlash? We hope so.

With these numbers what could the future be for the legacy and tradition of women artists?

EXHIBITING WOMEN ARTISTS IN NATIONAL PAVILLIONS AT 53RD VENICE BIENNALE 2009

Gayane Khachaturian - Armenia

Claire Healy - Australia

Elke Krystufek - Austria

Dorit Margreiter - Austria

Franziska Weinberger - Austria

Naila Sultan - Azerbaijan

Thora Dolven Balka - Denmark and Nordic Countries

Laura Horelli - Denmark and Nordic Countries

Klara Liden - Denmark and Nordic Countries

Nina Saunders - Denmark and Nordic Countries

Kristina Norman - Estonia

Owanto - Republic of Gabon

Nadine Hilbert - Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

Sarah Browne - Ireland

Elisa Sighicelli - Italy

Miwa Yanagi - Japan

Haegue Yang - Korea

Evelina Deicmane - Latvia

Teresa Margolles - Mexico

Fathiya Tahiri - Morocco

Fiona Tan - The Netherlands

Judy Millar - New Zealand

Francis Upritchard - New Zealand

Andrea Faciu - Romania

Gosha Ostretsov - Russia

Irina Korina - Russia

Marialuisa Tadei - Republic of San Marino

Nico Macina - Republic of San Marino

Elisa Monaldi - Republic of San Marino

Michela Pozzi - Republic of San Marino

Thea Tini - Republic of San Marino

Katarina Zdjelar - Serbia

Silvia Bachli - Switzerland

Sudsiri Pui-ock - Thailand
Wantanee Siripattananuntakul - Thailand

Banu Cennetoglu - Turkey

Lanava Gargash - United Arab Emerates

Gabriela Croes - Venezuela

Magdalena Fernindez - Venezuela

Bernardita Rakos - Venezuela

Antonieta Sosa - Venezuela

Oksana Shatalova - Kazakhstan

Yelena Vorobyeva - Kazakhstan

Ermek Jaenisch - Kyrgyzstan

Sandra Gamarra - Peru

Raquel Paiewonsky - Dominican Republic

Black Out

Destiny Deacon, the Goodie Hoodie Family, Whacked, 2007, Lightjet print from Polaroid original

by the Handmaiden

No matter how poor the numbers for women artists are in Broadsheet, they are even worse for Aboriginal artists. In the three years covered by the sample there was one review of an Aboriginal focussed exhibition: Cultural Warriors; two features, both on Richard Bell (a Man of Action); a couple of mentions in reviews for BOS 06, and News from Islands; and one image in two opinion articles about the Blake Prize for Religious Art (Shirley Purdie, Stations of the Cross, 2007).

One possible reason for this low coverage is that many Indigenous artists make paintings and the questions raised by artwork in this medium, do not coincide with the interests of the magazine. While it is not Broadsheet's responsibility to cover all shows and issues current in Australian art dialogues, and while Aboriginal artists received excellent coverage in other magazines like Art Monthly and Art Collector, it does seem very poor.

This poverty of coverage was amplified for me by the lack of 'Opinion' type articles focussed on the apology to the Stolen Generations by Prime Minster Rudd. In the three years of the sample, there were many 'Opinion' pieces written quickly in response to current events. These include, among others, articles on the APEC gathering in Sydney, the legacy of the Howard years, the Sedition laws and the 'Henson affair'.

In the first issue for 2008, which probably was very close to, if not printing, at the time of the apology on February the 13th, there were two 'Opinion' pieces responding to Charles Merewether comments in an article by Sebastian Smee in the Australian (5/11/07), where he claimed that Australia is parochial and insular, with no culture of ongoing discussion. No matter how frustrating Merewether’s comments may have been, they pale into insignificance when compared with the apology, its potential impact, and the questions it raised in the ongoing need for reconciliation. I hope that the 'Opinion' writers have considered what can be added to the dialogues around the apology and reconciliation one year on. I am sure I am not the only one looking forward to reading them.

Broadsheet Part 2

By The Handmaiden

After counting the last three years of Broadsheet, I found that images by women make up 15% of the total and the discussion of women in the content varied from 25 to 32%, depending on the type of article. Was the low representation of women a case of omission by focussing on other issues?

Broadsheet in recent years has had an increased focus on the Asian region. The majority of these articles in the 3-year sample, particularly those from China and Japan, featured the work of male artists. I asked myself whether this focus was contributing to the low representation of women artists in the magazine. However it seems that when you break down the numbers of articles by year, the statistic of women’s work in the illustrations follows those of the overall sample. For example in the 2006, the year of the lowest number of Asian articles, there was a corresponding low number of women’s images in the total. For the three years of the sample, feature articles on women’s work never gets above 3 per year, no matter the number of Asian articles. The only thing that changes there is the ratio to features on male artists.

Feature Articles Broadsheet 2006-2008 [click to enlarge]

So while the focus on Asia may be a contributing factor, it is not the main, or only factor that lowers the representation of women in general. Interestingly, it was also the Asian region where the most feminist-focussed articles originated (e.g. Nge, vol.37 no.1; and Ingham and Dirgantoro vol.36 no.1) Additionally, there are several women writers in the region to have regularly contributed in the last three year such as Biljana Ciric and Wulandani Dirgantoro.

In only counting the last three years I asked myself whether there would have been a greater representation of women in Volumes 34 (2005) and 33 (2004) given there where more women work on the covers in these years. In the years I counted (2006-2008) there were 4 issues with women’s work on the cover. The average statistic of photographs of work by women inside these issues was 12.8% compared with 15% as the percentage in the 3-years. In only one issue, did the percentage rise above the average to 19.3% and in two issues the percentage was as low as 8.6%.

Percentage of images from Broadsheet issues in 2006-07 with a women’s work on the cover. [click to enlarge]

What this suggests is that cover is no indicator of contents - if a woman’s work is on the cover there is no need to put women work on the inside. So even though volumes 34 and 33 had more female artist's work on the covers, there may have not been any greater representation of their work inside and therefore no better representation of women’s work in those preceding years not counted in the survey.

I then began to question whether the lower coverage of women work was due to potentially lower numbers in the exhibitions reviewed. The Sydney Biennales of 2008 and 2006 offer a useful test case given the large difference in gender representation in each exhibition. Additionally, as there where a number of articles on this exhibition I am not singling out any one writer for criticism. The 2008 Biennale had 25% women in the exhibition. The percentage of female artists mentioned in these interviews was 25% compared with 70% male. These percentages seem to reflect the representation of women in that exhibition. However, for the coverage of 2006 BOS where women made up 50% equal to that of the male representation, this trend was not repeated; the trend repeated was that of an underrepresentation of women in media coverage. In this year women made up only 36% of the media coverage compared to 62% of male artists.

Biennale of Sydney 2006-08, Articles that mention artists and Illustrations to articles [click to enlarge]

This statistic of women making up a third of the coverage in 2006 BOS reviews is similar to the general statics over the 3-year sample. At this point it would interesting to see if this one-third media coverage is reflected in other magazines and other exhibitions, so watch this space. However, while the work of women is mentioned half as often in reviews, in Broadsheet, 32.2% compared with male 62.3%; the images chosen to illustrate these articles is more often the work of men 71.6% compare with 19.6% women. So who is making the picture and article selection? What checks and balances are there in place to address the low number of women present?

The majority of images in Broadsheet contain a person, either as portraits of an interviewee, news images that included people or artworks that show the artist or another person (regardless of gender) in the work. Performance artists and new media artists who have images of themselves in their own work are the artists best represented across the three-year sample. Is it in part due to the black and white printing of the magazine and that perhaps an image of a person holds a fascination which transcends the reduce format?

I do not have enough information on the processes of writing and formatting of Broadsheet to answer definitively. Do writers request their articles to be illustrated by certain works? Are institutions or individual artists not supplying enough quality images for there to be a better cross-section? What power or influence does the advisory board have in deciding what gets reviewed and written? Alan Cruickshank is both the editor and designer of Broadsheet. No matter what the external factors are preventing the inclusion of women, certainly the final responsibility would lie with him.

Whatever the reason for Cruickshank's personal preference for images including people by male artists, the overwhelming sensation of reading three years worth of Broadsheet in a few weeks (ok- I scanned some of the articles) was that the presentation of the role of the artist is that of a Man of Action. By this I mean that Broadsheet preferences work by artists wherein artist subjectivity — and by extension here, male artist subjectivity — was central to the formation and enacting of their work. Perhaps this merely reflects Broadsheet's interest in process-based practices, albeit a very limited exploration, ignoring those artists who use graphic and sculptural forms. I started to wonder whether this was some essential gender difference between male artist and female artists, with men more readily take up the role of the visible maker and protagonist of action. However, to accept this argument felt like ignoring the many interesting and radicalising works by women over the 100 plus years of the feminist movement that questioned and opened up the role of artists and the categories of art.

It seems to me that Broadsheet is interested in promoting work that provides some sort of social criticism and/or work they perceive as 'avant-garde' and transgressive. Further, that Broadsheet sees itself promoting Australian and Asian artists in a potential gap in the international tradition of the avant-garde. Nothing much wrong with that you might say except the question of why are they mostly promoting male artists?

Perhaps by focussing so narrowly on male artists who use the human form in some way in their performance/new media practice, Broadsheet have unwittingly created a canon of this kind of work i.e. a tradition. I contend that the model of the artist within this tradition, created and perpetuated through the number of articles and images focusing on this work, is too closely aligned to that of the Artist as Hero- a form as limiting to male artists as it is to the women generally excluded from it.

What is the explanation then for why men’s work is considered more closely connected to the larger questions of Australia and contemporary society that are addressed in 'Opinion' articles. Does a Woman of Action have a connotation that is old fashion (we did it in the 1970’s) or somehow not useful to these writers? Or it simply, as one commentator put it, mainstream culture is male culture - and that Broadsheet has no interest in questioning that.