UNSW Galleries

Just days before International Women’s Day and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, the exhibition Collection+: Shaun Gladwell opened at UNSW Galleries. Since re/opening in 2013, the gallery has hosted four solo shows for male artists and, disappointingly, no solo shows for female artists.

Prompted by this discrepancy and the many missed opportunities, I decided to follow in the CoUNTess’ footsteps and get counting!

Here are the results:

UNSW Galleries’ worst performance was in the category of Solo Shows, with exhibitions being dedicated to Edward Burtynsky, Shaun Gladwell, Richard Goodwin and Richard Mosse. I hope to see this figure balanced out in a year or two.

The figures for curated Group Shows also aren’t great. Female artists comprise only 34% of artists shown, in comparison to 53% male and 13% collaborating artists. The worst offender was curator Andrew Frost, whose exhibition Conquest of Space: Science Fiction & Contemporary Art exhibited more than double the number of male to female artists, and also included a film program of nine male directors. Female directors were entirely absent. By contrast, David McNeil’s Quo Vadis: The last drawing show represented an equal number of male and female artists. Special mention goes to Ali Groves whose exhibition Mighty Healthy was the only Group Show to represent more women than men.

Finally, I counted the number of artists selected for Prize exhibitions and here I was pleasantly surprised. Men and women were equally represented, tallying 48% each with the leftover 4% representing collaborating artists. The Prize shows include The Blake Prize, John Fries Award and the Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarships. It seems the entry process and the panel-like nature of judging and curating Prize shows produces far more gender-balanced exhibitions. Kudos to the Freedmans, Kath Fries, Megan Cope, Anne Ferran, Alexie Glass-Kantor, Sebastien Goldspink, Lisa Havilah, Tim Johnson, Jay Johnston, Alex Norman and Jess Olivieri.

UNSW Galleries also produced some interesting statistics in terms of Curators and Judges. Women tallied 57% of solo and co-curators and judges, while men tallied only 37%. (The remaining 8% are either unknown or private). These are encouraging statistics and remind us that the artworld is no longer so firmly controlled by the old, white, male guard of yesteryear. 

Overall, UNSW Galleries has exhibited 51% male artists, 40% female artists and 9% collaborating*. My verdict: not terrible, but there’s certainly room for improvement!

* Student shows including Neil Brandhorst’s SEGUE and The Annual were not included in this count.

Dr Louise R Mayhew is an Australian feminist art historian and the SLNSW Nancy Keesing Fellow. She’s currently researching the Women’s Warehouse (1979–81) and contemporary collaboration in Australia.

Australia Council 2008-14

In case you have ever wondered how the Australia Council fares on gender representation when awarding their grants, CoUNTess is here to share the data with you. And the news is positive.

We have discovered Tableau Public a data-visualisation tool with which to crunch the numbers in many complex ways. Where we would normally collect and count the gender representation figures ourselves, we have availed ourselves of the publicly available data published by the Australia Council  for the Arts, which has handily counted for us all the Visual Arts Board  grants awarded from 2008 to 2014 (here).

Our findings discovered that over these nine years women are indeed the largest group of funded individuals receiving almost $300,000 more than male artists, who are the second biggest individual category. CoUNTess knows there are actually more women artists than men artists because 65% of graduates from art degrees are women, so a 50.73% representation of women in this category is quite an achievement given the usual trend of under-representation-despite-tertiary-majority.

The amount of $ funded by grants each year has drastically dipped in 2014 by about half a million dollars.

The 'All Grants Funded' graph shows two categories where men are funded more than women: the 'New Work Established' category and the 'Studio Residencies'. We also grouped the funded grants data by year and by state to see if there where any fluctuations. One trend we noticed was that in 2010 the mens percentage of the total grants spiked.

The following graph shows the number of individuals who received one grant, two grants, three grants and more between 2008 and 2014.

The people making the decisions on grant recepients is the Peer Assessment Panel. From 2008-2011 the Peer Assessment Panel consisted of 5-7 people chaired by Ted Snell OAM; an artist and career academic with an impressive history of board chairing since 1999.  After 2012 the Australia Council website names the panel members but does not distinguish the roles of chair, voting member or peer advisor. 

Starting in 2008 you will notice there has been non-artists and crafts people on the peer panel: gallery directors, curators and arts writers. You will also notice how in 2014 the percentage of artists on the panel drastically reduced, from, on average, 65% to 27%.  There has certainly been a change of guard and the baby boomer three-year panel members reign is over. They been replaced by a much younger generation of artists and arts professionals who might sit on only one panel meeting.

There is another layer of data the Australia Council for the Arts provides: funding to organisations. It will take a lot more digging to see how the funded organisations distributed their grants. In our next post, CoUNTess will reveal the gender breakdown of these grants. This data dig should be interesting, as previous CoUNTess posts have shown that CAOS galleries have not distributed their funds with gender parity.

Stay tuned.

42

A consistent number at the CoUNTesses offices is 40.  That's 40% on average of representation of women artists in Australia's public and commercial galleries.  But CoUNTess noticed a couple of changing signs that inch our numbers closer towards equality in gender representation in the visual arts we thought we would share with you.  42 for now is the new 40.

First of all, we're pleased to see so many female artists represented by commercial galleries and getting some wall space at this this years Gallery Art Basel Hong Kong. In fact, 42% of the Australian galleries artists in the Hong Kong Basel Art Fair are women!

Diane Tanzer - Natasha Bieniek
Utopian Slumps - Jake Walker
Sullivan_Strumpf - Sam Leach, Tony Albert, Ex de Medici, Alex Seton
Tolarno Gallery - Anastasia Klose, Patricia Picinini, Ben Quilty
Jan Murphy Gallery - Danie Mellor
Murray White Room - Polly Borland, Anne-Marie May, Alasdair McLuckie, Aubry/Broquard
Anna Schwartz - Heman Chong, Angela de la Cruz
Roslyn Oxley9 - Daniel Boyd, Fiona Hall

CoUNTess has been keeping a running tab of art prizes over the last twelve months (but admits it is not an exhaustive range) but found have found changes here, too, in the land of art prizes with 42% of the 2013 winners being female artists!

While understanding the limits of magical thinking and the claim that 42 is the answer to the universe and everything, and remembering that Elvis did not live to see 43, CoUNTess believes that 42 is indeed a special number that we will be keeping our eye on.

The 19th Biennale of Sydney 2014 : Imagine what you desire

The Biennale of Sydney established in 1973 has been curated by 4 women, 14 men and 1 collaborative team (m+f).

The 19th Biennale of Sydney - Imagine What You Desire is curated by Julianna Engberg and continues the curator's commitment to exhibiting women artists - a commitment established via her role as Artistic Director of ACCA for many years, where a high representation of women artists have been shown.  Engberg includes 38 female artists and 45 male artists in the 19th Biennale which shows a promising result and a steep improvement on previous years.

Gender Representation of Artists in the 19th Biennale of Sydney 2014

But while women are certainly participating in the 2014 Biennale in greater numbers, CoUNTess data-mining disappointingly uncovered a gender bias in the media and marketing around the exhibition/event.  

Catalogue cover = 1 male artist

Website links to Youtube video interviews with artists = 3 male artists, 1 collab duo (m+f)
Primary School education resource = 4 female artists, 11 male artists and 3 collab
Secondary School education resource = 10 female artists, 15 male artists, 5 collab

While the website also features a list of exhibitions in local commerical and public galleries. Selection for inclusion in this list is unclear - so CoUNTess counted a range of local Sydney contemporary art spaces to see what artists were on show.

* indicates gallery was holding two solo exhibitions

Not enough women of "merit" ?

The CoUNTess inbox set off gender representation alarm bells this week when more than a few emails rolled in announcing the selected artists in a number of upcoming exhibitions in some of Australia's publicly funded museums and public spaces. Whether you're emerging or established, or as they say in Melbourne, "NOW",  in these prominent exhibitions it would seem the art-world gatekeepers are having the same problem as Tony Abbott who could not find enough women of "merit" to fill his governments' cabinet positions!

Annabel Crabb's commentary on Abbott's "merit" claim is quoted here for its humour and the familiar parallel with claims of artistic merit that also dominate the contemporary visual arts

"That's just how it panned out" is the traditionalists' defence of organisations that proudly appoint "only on merit" and find, time after time, that an astonishingly high proportion of the really excellent people also have willies.

1. NSW Visual Arts Fellowship for Emerging Artists (used to be Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship)

12 Finalists - 4 female artists - 8 male artists
There is really no excuse for gender inequality in a show of selected emerging artists fresh out of our national art schools which are overflowing with female students (previous CoUNTess posts have determined up to 70% and sometimes more graduating students from fine art courses are women).  How does a result occur where twice as many male artists than women artists are selected?  Is the way the art-world judges artistic merit playing a part?  Is artistic merit gendered?  Or is it possible women artists are not applying in sufficient numbers? If not why not?  

For reference CoUNTess combed back through the scholarships history and found an equal distribution of the scholarship winners between female, male and collaborative duos.  But regardless of such an even handed historical result, when Artspace recently put together a travelling exhibition showcasing some of the previous winners prophetically titled How Yesterday Remembers Tomorrowhttps://mgnsw.org.au/sector/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/how-yesterday-remembers-tomorrow/ it included; 1 solo female artist, 2 collaborative male/female duos and 3 solo male artists - effectively 5 male artists and 3 female artists.

The Artspace website, where this scholarship exhibition has been held on an annual basis, quotes the Minister for the Arts The Hon. George Souris MP who states:

Applicants were assessed by an independent panel on their artistic merit, professional skills and experience, the suitability of their proposed program in relation to their artistic practice, and the significance of the program to their career....

 

2. 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: DARK HEART 
 
23 exhibiting artists - 7 female artists - 15 male artists - 1 collaborative group

Adelaide Biennial is an exhibition at the other end of the professional spectrum to the NSW Emerging Artist Fellowship. CoUNTess has addressed this bi-annual curated exhibition in previous posts - and unfortunately this show has mostly favoured male artists with one exception in 2004 when curated by Julie Robinson.  

The AGSA announces the exhibition is about difficult conversations and the guest speaker will be Germaine Greer!  

CoUNTess has a difficult question - why so few women artists?

From the Art Gallery of South Australia's website

‘In its 13th iteration the Biennial will tap into the hearts and minds of contemporary Australian society, to explore the political, the psychological and the personal. I am after an inherently emotional and immersive exhibition, one that is unafraid to ask difficult questions and expose the underbelly of society.’ Nick Mitzevich curator

The theme of difficult conversations runs throughout the biennial. This will be presented in the exhibition publication which will feature an essay by Australia’s most controversial expatriate, Germaine Greer. 

3. Melbourne Now NGV 

28 initial artists announced on NGV website - 8 female artists - 14 male artists + (5 designers 4 of whom are women and 1 male)

CoUNTess is looking forward to seeing the full list of over 130 participating artists. In the meantime we had to make do with the initial list, which is being released in stages and published on the NGV website ...

Melbourne Now celebrates the latest art, architecture, design, performance and cultural practice to reflect the complex cultural landscape of creative Melbourne. This ambitious and far-reaching exhibition across NGV Australia and NGV International will show how visual artists and creative practitioners have profoundly contributed to creating a place with a unique and dynamic cultural identity.

While CoUNTess's focus is always on the contemporary artists' gender representation, it is obvious the greater percentage of women participants in Melbourne Now at this point are designers.  While the majority of contemporary artists in Melbourne Now at this point are male artists.  Is this also a situation of just not enough women artists with "artistic merit"? How can these gender representation numbers make sense when they sit in stark contrast to the fact that the gender distribution of fine art graduating students (the pool of artists) are 70% women.

We hope this initial published artists participant list will not reflect the gender representation in the full show when it opens in November.  Because the very real-world outcome of unequal gender representation is unequal distribution of funds and thats a very real pay gap?


4. Primavera - Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
4 female artists, 4 male artists

Just so your spirits are not completely disheartened there are some exhibitions that manage equal gender representation and Primavera 2013 is one.

This much-loved annual exhibition (turning 22 this year!) returns to our galleries with the next crop of unapologetically bold makers, thinkers and performers. Hailing from Perth, Melbourne and Sydney, the work of these eight young Australian artists will delight and fascinate.

5. The Wandering: Moving Images from the MCA Collection
15 exhibiting artists : 4 female artists (one is a collaborative duo), 10 male artists

Unfortunately another current MCA project can not claim the same gender equality outcome as Primavera.  This exhibition The Wandering is a touring show of works purchased by the MCA for their collection of 14 moving image works by 4 female artists (one being a collaborative duo) and 10 male artists.

This collection-based show would suggest that either the MCA doesn't appear to have a gender equity policy and therefore haven't seen the need to collect moving image work by women, or they do purchase moving image work by women, but they just choose not to show it.

Whichever the case, this example shows how the work of women artists is undervalued and under represented. The blurb from the MCA website about this show claims;

The Wandering: Moving images from the MCA Collection takes us on a unique journey through contemporary Australian art. The immediacy of moving image provides opportunities for art to engage with audiences in ways that are different to static, more traditional mediums, such as painting and sculpture. The exhibition presents artworks recently acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia by 15 leading artists