Current Programming

Margaret Whitlam Galleries
8 April - 16 July

Ladies to the Front – the Art of Noise is an opportunity to celebrate women artists who work across performance, sound, composition and visual arts, and has a strong emphasis on some of our leading alumnae from Western Sydney University.

This exhibition is a somewhat joyous experience of energy, power, rebellion, and of course punk feminism, or no offence to the vintage of most of the exhibitors, Meno-Punk* at its core.  The title of the exhibition is a play on the Girls to the front cry by Riot Grrrl bands of the early 1990s especially the call of Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill.

The Riot Grrrl movement began in Olympia, Washington, when a group of women held a meeting to discuss how to address sexism in the punk scene. The women decided they wanted to start a “girl riot” against a society they felt offered no validation of women’s experiences.

Riot Grrrls believed in girls actively engaging in cultural production, putting on gigs, creating and recording their own music and fanzines rather than following existing materials. The bands associated with Riot Grrrl used their music to express feminist and anti-racist viewpoints. Bands such as Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Heavens to Betsy provided sharp social commentary on the position of females in society at large.

Focused on the support females can receive from one another, Riot Grrrls problematized the female body by talking about female desires, body parts and more taboo subjects such as incest and rape in an upfront and at times, perceived as confrontational. Tired of being misrepresented, the Riot Grrrls, declared a media black-out in the early 1990s, and refused to speak to any mainstream journalists or allow documentation of their activities.

Are the ladies in the exhibition continuing to rejoice in women’s representation and the DIY aesthetics of the 1990s, are they defiant members of a Girl/Ladies Riot? 

Exhibiting Artists: Holly Harrison, Justene Williams, Kate Brown, NELL and Tina Havelock Stevens 

Exhibition curator: Gen-X Meno Punk, Margaret Hancock - Senior Curator, Western Sydney Creative

*The term Meno Punk comes from the myth shattering documentary and podcast about peri/menopause and the creative process seen thru the lens of defiant Gen-X musicians and doctors.