Is reverse discrimination over for the Counihan Gallery’s annual Women’s Salon?
Pinar Gencturk reports in the Moreland Community News (5/8/08 Fairfax Community News Network) that Moreland Council has presented an agenda item “to change the Women’s Open Salon art exhibition to a bi-annual event and initiate an open salon art exhibition for men and women to showcase their work.”
In the two decades since the Women’s Salon started the position of women in the art world has changed considerably both for women artists and for women working in galleries. The Women’s Salon has assisted in the emergence of many notable artists, for example Nusra Latif Qureshi, Moreland should take credit for, in part, changing the situation for women in Australian arts. In the last two decades the art world has rigorously examined gender issues, promoted the work of women artists and is now probably one of the least sexist areas human activity in Australia.
So there is now no need for Moreland Council to provide special assistance to women artists in the area. The Women’s Salon will soon be, if it isn’t already, a redundant anachronism; this year Brunswick Arts, in the face of so many all women shows, organized an exhibition of all male artists. If the Women’s Salon does not aspire to make itself redundant then it will become an issue of sexism.
The Guerrilla Girls made a name for themselves in the 1980s by listing the names of female artists exhibited in certain galleries or mentioned in art magazines to expose sexism in the art world. Following the example of the Guerrilla Girls I will divide the names according to gender of the entire artists listed in the Counihan Gallery exhibition programs 2007 & 2008.
Female Artists:
Helen Anderson, Maree Azzopardi, Ros Bandt, Liliana Barbieri, Hannah Bertram, Robyn Cerretti, Maree Clarke, Haya Cohen, Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Kate Cotching, Mary-Louise Edwards, Genevieve Grieves, Mandy Gunn, Felicity Rose Hardy, Zsuzsanna Hase, Yolanda Juen, Chako Kato, Jillian Kelliee, Susan Knight, Kathe Kollwitz, Taryn Lee-Styre, Sarina Lirosi, X de Medici, Virginia Miller, Tomiko Miyazawa, Maria Pena, Deborah Paauwe, Luciana Perin, Sonya G Peters, Alex Martinis Roe, Naomi Schwartz, Anne Smith, Wilma Tabacco, Deb Taylor, Georgia Thorpe, Fatemeh Vafaeinejad, Marjana Vuk-Nikic, Claire Watson, Vicky West, Ilka White, Xiao Yu Bai
Male Artists:
Tony Adams, Jarrod Atkinson, Noel Counihan, Lucky Edwards, William Eicholtz, Douglas Kirwan, Goya, Grosz, Gary Lee, Trevor Mein, Millet, Dixon Patten, Amer Rashad, Vin Ryan, Darren Wardle, Yakov Zaper
Black Mark 