Campbelltown Arts Centre gallery is unveiling its first all-female exhibition, Borrowed Scenery, opening on 2 January 2019, Borrowed Scenery is a milestone exhibition for the gallery, featuring only female artists from the Cambelltown City collection.
For centuries, women have been the subjects of male artists, inserted into scenes framed by the male gaze. Borrowed Scenery explores what happens when the subjects of this gaze look back, step outside the frame, and assert their own vision and experience of the world. With more than 50 artworks from the Campbelltown City collection including ceramics, weavings, sculpture, paintings prints and new media, Borrowed Scenery celebrates and acknowledges the significance and influence of individual practice. Rather than becoming a subject of a scene, Borrowed Scenery creates a reflection of unique achievement and explores the discourses of female representation within collections and exhibitions. Equal representation within arts and cultural institutions is not a new campaign, however recent movements locally and internationally have changed the dynamic of the conversation from awareness to forming action. As part of the exhibition Campbelltown Arts Centre has engaged The Countess Report for a new commission responding to Borrowed Scenery and discourses of female representation within collections and exhibitions.
Jasmine Kean, Curator and Collections Officer at Campbelltown Arts Centre feels the exhibition is an important one.“As the carer of the collection, I feel that it’s important to address the traditional and systemically patriarchal methods of forming and growing a collection and those systems we default to, and those that underpin contemporary arts and museums practices. By exposing these practices we can try to change the way we approach the development of tomorrow’s collections,” she said.
The exhibition features some of Australia’s biggest names in visual arts, including: Tracey Moffat, Deborah Kelly and Joan Ross.
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