ENQUIRIES:
Please direct all enquiries to us at: info@acca.melbourne or call (+613) 9697 9999
Hello, how are you going? Are you reading something, writing something or listening to something?
ACCA Book Club, our new monthly lunch-time catch up about reading, writing and more. Each month, we invite a special guest and previous contributor to ACCA publications, to lead an open and active discussion with participants about a written or spoken-word work of their choice online via Zoom to a small group.
Next up are Elvis Richardson and Melinda Rackham, who will discuss their forthcoming publication CoUNTess: Spoiling Illusions since 2008.
To take part in this June Book Club, register here as soon as you can (as places are limited) and get reading!
On registration you will receive a unique zoom link and a preview chapter of ‘Chapter 3: My Brilliant Art School Career’ from Countess: Spoiling Illusions Since 2008.
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST:
ABOUT THE TEXT:
Since 2008, under the mantle of CoUNTess, Elvis Richardson has investigated how economics are skewed around women in contemporary art. She is not concerned with moral outrage (although this would be a reasonable response) but in quantifying power, representation and reward in the art world.
CoUNTess is a uniquely Australian intervention that holds the art world to account. Sharing aims with gender activist group Guerrilla Girls, curator Maura Reilly, theorist Katrin Hassler and data journalist Mona Chalabi, her aim has been to expose illusions of equality. Writer and curator Melinda Rackham joins Richardson as co-author of this volume which comprises selected posts from the original CoUNTess blog alongside new data that unpacks and critiques institutional paths into the art world from a gender and socio-economic perspective. Contextualised within the histories and concerns of art and feminisms, they chart asymmetrical representation of women as artists, curators, directors, educators and authors, and suggest strategies for change in the visual and literary arts.
Rackham and Richardson probe the underlying power structures on which art careers are built through seven stages over seven sections. They reveal hidden gender inequity in professional expectations, prizes and scholarship; and consider the sporting chances of women in an art world that defaults to male. Bottom heavy with women, why are there so few women at the top? Ultimately, they ask, are equity challenges and wins really anything to do with art? Resisting the seduction of subtle co-option and Femwashing, CoUNTess is watching as, after public exposure and under pressure, public institutions mount blockbuster women’s shows to improve their percentages and public image.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Elvis Richardson is an artist, writer and founding editor of CoUNTess, a blog publishing data on gender representation in the Australian visual arts sector. The first Countess Report was released in 2016, a sector wide bench marking data collection project, and in 2017 The Countess Report re-launched in collaboration with Amy Prcevich and Miranda Samuels. As an artist Richardson’s practice is anchored on concepts of absence, ambition and abandonment, build emotional and politically charged narratives that scrutinise the inequities around issues such as housing, diversity, aging, identity and recognition. Her work has recently been represented in exhibitions in major Australian institutions, including Unfinished Business: Perspectives on art and feminism, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2018; Versus Rodin: Bodies across space and time, Art Gallery of South Australia, 2017; and Transmission: Legacies of The Television Age, National Gallery of Victoria, 2015. Richardson was director of a number of artist run initiatives including Firstdraft 1996-97, DEATH BE KIND 2010-12 and True Estate 2017-18. Richardson is represented by Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide, and Galerie pompom, Sydney.
Melinda Rackham is an artist, writer, curator, and currently Adjunct Research Professor, UniSA Creative, University of South Australia. A pioneer of Internet art, Rackham has exhibited widely, participating in many capacities at biennales, film festivals and major events around the globe, including Ars Electronica and Documenta XII. Rackham established empyre, one of the world’s leading networked media arts and critical theory forums in 2002 – and was appointed the inaugural Curator of Networked Art at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in 2003, where she curated Australia’s first major survey of Networked Art. Rackham is a former director of ANAT (2005-09). Her numerous publications have explored the worlds of art, artists, social justice and environmental issues, and she was recently awarded the 2018 SALA Art Writers Award. She has undertaken art and writing residencies in Australia, Finland, New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong, the Netherlands and UK, and spent a number of years in Pukatja, APY Lands. Her Covid19 Instagram intervention, #remakemistresses will recreate the work of 50 contemporary Australian women artists.