Creators and Inventors

The exhibition Creators and Inventors: Australian Women’s Art in the National Gallery of Victoria is drawn from all areas of the Australian Art Collections. The exhibition covers Australian art history since 1860, which is the date of the earliest work by a woman in our collection: Georgiana McCrae’s portrait of her friend and fellow artist, Louisa Anne Meredith. At the same time it provides an insight to the extent and quality and omissions of women’s work from these collections.

It compares changing attitudes and techniques employed by artists over the past 130 years, and investigates social changes, especially educational opportunities for women. It looks at the development of the collections from the last century, when very little women’s art was collected to the present day when the gender balance of Australians producing art is no longer an issue.

From the curatorial point of view the exhibition is experimental as it is helping us to assess the National Gallery of Victoria Collection. In this way it is an exhibition with a difference because it is organised with a specific focus to give us a particular perspective on the Collection and, indeed, on the way exhibitions can be curated and presented.

Sourced from: Creators & Inventors: Australian Women’s Art in the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria, 1993