Sabotage of 'Sex, Art and the Inner World: Women Artists Reclaiming their Creative Birth Right'?

By Ruth Skilbeck

Yesterday I posted an article on my blog on Sex, Art and the Inner World: Women Artists Reclaiming their Creative Birth Right, which looks at cultural issues of changing attitudes to sexuality in western culture, and relating this to women contemporary artists practices since the 1970s women's art movement of feminism in the 70s. This is in the field of my research as a feminist arts writer (and also novel in progress). This has been a tremendously popular article- I usually receive about 100-200 blog hits a day. Yesterday, my blog had 1,675 views and this was in response to this article with hundreds of views again today and rapidly climbing. This morning the article had almost 200 'likes' and has been shared many times on Facebook (I know because I have seen this in the news feed). However - mid morning all the 'likes' disappeared from the post- on this blog. And there is no record of the number of 'shares' it has had and is still getting on Facebook.

I can only assume this is some form of 'sabotage' or blocking because of the subject matter. All the artists in the post are working as contemporary artists in Australia and have mainstream gallery representation. Their work is in private and public galleries and the works shown in the article are well known, and have been displayed in public galleries. This has not happened to any other articles on this blog - a recent post I wrote on A Homage to (Censored) Women Artists on International Women's Day still shows the "shares' record, and also the number of 'likes' on the blog - so I can only suspect, at this point, that there is some attempt going on to hide the popularity of the article and its contents. It has attracted very positive responses (in Facebook comments) and views from all around the world.

Considering that writers and artists are now required to use social media platforms, blogs and Facebook, to work and to build up their audience, this would appear to be a very heinous act- as it appears that it is an attempt to sabotage me - and also the artists I write about- by erasing evidence of my popularity of the post (and writer) and subject matter (the artists and their work). When artists and writers only survive nowadays by being able to demonstrate popular support and support from their communities, to remove the 'likes' and 'shares' of this post, has significant implications for my reputation and for that of the artists in the post. Rather than being able to show how popular and much liked the article is - the evidence has been removed. 

Given that Facebook and blogs social media platforms are supposed to be a forum for popular opinion and a way that people can express their views and preferences for cultural products, through ‘liking’ and ‘sharing’ - this appears to be an attempt at sabotage . If all evidence of the popularity of my writing is removed, this is a way of thwarting my chances of building my audience, getting my work published - as publishers also require to see how popular one's work is. As I am currently not employed in any other capacity apart from writing, and in the stages of approaching publishers to publish my books, I need to show evidence of impact of my writing. I am not paid to write on my blog. And I spend a great deal of time and care on writing, about causes and art and artists that I think are important. As a journalist I used to be well paid for my writing- as a blogger I do far more work (it seems like) for nothing. And like most artists live in a state of penury. All we have is our work, and passion, and to be censored and thwarted at every move is very disheartening. 

However, like Diane Mantzaris whose work I show in the article, and who has been discussing her experiences of censorship through social media and in media interviews, it will not stop me, and I will continue to write and approach publishers regardless, including on this significant and very popular topic of public interest -  women artists representations of  sexuality and subjectivity and the inner world- which I now know does have so much interest and support from women, and men, around the world. 

'Gazing Boldly Back and Forward: Urban Aboriginal Women Artists and New Global Feminisms in Transnational Art'

To date, surprisingly little has been published on urban contemporary Aboriginal art in comparison to 'desert' contemporary Aboriginal art. Yet it is a movement - of profound social, political, cultural and artistic significance - that has gained momentum in Australia, and attracted increasing international attention, since the late 1980s. I begin to explore the art and culture of this movement focusing on women artists, in the essay ‘Gazing Boldly Back and Forward: Urban Aboriginal Women Artists and New Global Feminisms in Transnational Art' just published in The International Journal for the Arts in Society. Discussion in the essay focuses on the work of prominent Australian Indigenous artist Fiona Foley's work, including an interview I conducted with Fiona Foley at her retrospective 'Fiona Foley-Forbidden' (2009-10) at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art; the works of artists in the the exhibition Women's Art, Women's Business at Sydney College of the Arts, July 2010; and the context of the Boomali Aboriginal Artist Co-Operative, which Fiona Foley co-founded in 1987. 


I gave a conference presentation based on my research for this paper, at the International Arts in Society Conference at Sydney College of the Arts, last July 2010, which coincided with the Sydney Biennale where Fiona Foley had an installation on Cockatoo Island.

The project was assisted by an Australia Council for the Arts Visual Arts New Work grant.

Here's the abstract of the paper:

Gazing Boldly Back and Forward: Urban Aboriginal Women Artists and New Global Feminisms in Transnational Art

By Ruth Skilbeck

Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian women contemporary artists made an important contribution to the foundational impacts and ongoing significance of feminism and the 1970s Women’s Art Movement on all that has followed in international contemporary art. Whereas distance from Euro-centric culture was once lamented by Australian settlers as a tyranny, critical distance from colonial power discourses has functioned as a strength for women artists who use their art to gaze back not only at colonial oppression of Indigeneity, but also at western art’s historical hegemonic male representation of women in the public cultural domain. Women artists do this by representing themselves. Fiona Foley, one of Australia’s foremost artists and a curator, academic and writer, has since the 1980s in her art confronted political issues of Indigeneity and identity as a woman in a cultural history of trauma and dispossession- bearing witness to her cultural heritage as a descendent of the Badtjala people, who were forcibly removed from K’gari or Thoorgine (Fraser Island) in the early twentieth century. The paper applies an innovative multimodal fugal critical analysis – drawing on psychological and musical meanings of fugue – to discuss Foley’s work; the paper draws on an interview the author conducted with Fiona Foley at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, including photographs of the artist and images of her work. The analysis focuses on Foley’s site specific installation at Cockatoo Island at the Sydney Biennale 2010, and her recent survey show at the MCA.

Keywords:

Australian Contemporary Women Artists, Urban Aboriginal Australian Artists, Indigenous Art, Global Feminisms, Fugal Writing

International Journal of the Arts in Society, Volume 5, Issue 6, pp.261-276. Article: Print (Spiral Bound). Article: Electronic (PDF File; 1.078MB).

'Gazing Boldly Back and Forward: Urban Aboriginal Women Artists and New Global Feminisms in Transnational Art'

To date, surprisingly little has been published on urban contemporary Aboriginal art in comparison to 'desert' contemporary Aboriginal art. Yet it is a movement - of profound social, political, cultural and artistic significance - that has gained momentum in Australia, and attracted increasing international attention, since the late 1980s. I begin to explore the art and culture of this movement focusing on women artists, in the essay ‘Gazing Boldly Back and Forward: Urban Aboriginal Women Artists and New Global Feminisms in Transnational Art' just published in The International Journal for the Arts in Society. Discussion in the essay focuses on the work of prominent Australian Indigenous artist Fiona Foley's work, including an interview I conducted with Fiona Foley at her retrospective 'Fiona Foley-Forbidden' (2009-10) at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art; the works of artists in the the exhibition Women's Art, Women's Business at Sydney College of the Arts, July 2010; and the context of the Boomali Aboriginal Artist Co-Operative, which Fiona Foley co-founded in 1987. 


I gave a conference presentation based on my research for this paper, at the International Arts in Society Conference at Sydney College of the Arts, last July 2010, which coincided with the Sydney Biennale where Fiona Foley had an installation on Cockatoo Island.

The project was assisted by an Australia Council for the Arts Visual Arts New Work grant.

Here's the abstract of the paper:

Gazing Boldly Back and Forward: Urban Aboriginal Women Artists and New Global Feminisms in Transnational Art

By Ruth Skilbeck

Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian women contemporary artists made an important contribution to the foundational impacts and ongoing significance of feminism and the 1970s Women’s Art Movement on all that has followed in international contemporary art. Whereas distance from Euro-centric culture was once lamented by Australian settlers as a tyranny, critical distance from colonial power discourses has functioned as a strength for women artists who use their art to gaze back not only at colonial oppression of Indigeneity, but also at western art’s historical hegemonic male representation of women in the public cultural domain. Women artists do this by representing themselves. Fiona Foley, one of Australia’s foremost artists and a curator, academic and writer, has since the 1980s in her art confronted political issues of Indigeneity and identity as a woman in a cultural history of trauma and dispossession- bearing witness to her cultural heritage as a descendent of the Badtjala people, who were forcibly removed from K’gari or Thoorgine (Fraser Island) in the early twentieth century. The paper applies an innovative multimodal fugal critical analysis – drawing on psychological and musical meanings of fugue – to discuss Foley’s work; the paper draws on an interview the author conducted with Fiona Foley at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, including photographs of the artist and images of her work. The analysis focuses on Foley’s site specific installation at Cockatoo Island at the Sydney Biennale 2010, and her recent survey show at the MCA.

Keywords:

Australian Contemporary Women Artists, Urban Aboriginal Australian Artists, Indigenous Art, Global Feminisms, Fugal Writing

International Journal of the Arts in Society, Volume 5, Issue 6, pp.261-276. Article: Print (Spiral Bound). Article: Electronic (PDF File; 1.078MB).