Intersection
Women’s Work Art Collective
Olga Gallery
30 May - 25 June 2025
“She reflects on a life spent on service”
“… a different way of seeing, poised on a revelation.”
Feminism has a publicity problem. An easy target for politicians, comedians and lay people alike, feminists are perceived to be overly aggressive, outdated, whiny, or just plain weird.
What is there to complain about, after all? At least in New Zealand, women have the vote and can enter the workforce with relative ease. We have legislation, which prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sex, as well as parental, miscarriage and domestic violence leave. And women far exceed men in the tertiary education context. Meanwhile, other social justice movements (such as rangatiratanga Māori, disability justice and queer and trans liberation) demand attention of their own, revealing blind spots in “mainstream” (often white, middle-class) feminism.
However, the Women’s Work Art Collective (WWAC) contends that feminism still has its place and an urgent role to play in current events. Resisting a seemingly pervasive cultural amnesia within the wider population, the WWAC values the history and legacy of feminism whilst also acknowledging the need to widen its lens. And whether it’s reproductive rights in the US, or pay equity in New Zealand, they are cognisant that these hard won rights cannot be taken for granted.
An additional focus is the reality that we are still living in a world designed for men and the male physiology, which does not account for women’s fluctuating needs as a result of their menstrual cycle, perimenopause / menopause and during pregnancy. This system also does not acknowledge the special role that women play in caregiving, with this labour being largely unacknowledged and taken for granted. Particularly when children are involved, women tend to spend the bulk of their middle years caring for others. They tend to work in relatively underpaid caregiving roles (teacher, social worker, old age care). And to take on the caregiving for siblings, elderly parents and other relatives later in life. Creativity and ambition are often experienced as selfish or an indulgence, bringing with them an attendant anxiety. Within a contemporary arts context, by the time female artists are able to better focus on their practice in later life, opportunities for fellowships, residencies and scholarships have all but disappeared - most of these focused on developing young talent.
Founded by Linda Cook, Anita DeSoto, Emma Cook, and Ana Terry, the WWAC was established to provide connection and solidarity for its members, to highlight these issues within the public discourse and to create opportunities for older female artists who sit at this intersection of age, gender, and caregiving.
Emma Cook’s poetry provides political commentary on women’s issues, including the dynamics of who can speak and who is spoken to, the beauty myth, social norms and more. In her own words, Emma is interested in the “domestic gothic”, the dark side of domesticity. A black corset depicts vivid flames, evoking the creative impulse within as well as the ultimate crime - the illicit desire to burn the domestic life to the ground. Her work also aims to reclaim craft methods, an art form traditionally dominated by women and derided as a ‘lower’ form of art, perceived as largely utilitarian in nature. Through her practice Emma maintains a deep respect for these methods and the history of women’s work.
The methodical and repetitive nature of Linda Cook’s practice involves layer upon layer of paper maché being built up to create her sculptural paintings. These works use waste materials in a nod to environmentalism. However, the labour involved in their creation is also suggestive of the life of the artist, who has occupied the role of carer over many decades. These works necessitate ongoing attention, patience and presence and there is a spiritual dimension to care that resonates in their making. There is also a resolute determination to create and to be seen. Growing up in a working-class English family in the 1960s/70s, the artist describes her personal abilities and strengths as having been “cauterised by an expected societal construct to be the stabilising domestic individual who establishes the next generation and supports a key worker in the establishing of their work ethic and contribution towards the commercial world.” This is a conditioning she continues to examine and resist, both through her work and the WWAC.
In her paintings DeSoto co-opts Baroque and Victorian styles but reframes the female figure as central to the action. Male figures are abstracted out, the artist preferring to focus on female stories and togetherness, thereby upending a narrative of woman as accessory, victim, pawn and/or ideal. Alternatively, the female figure is abstracted as in Unknown Immigrant, suggesting the manner in which women and their stories have been made invisible throughout both history and in art history, specifically. Through reclaiming traditional styles of painting, DeSoto aims to put the power back into women’s’ hands. Her work can also be seen as an homage and retrospective act of healing in respect of the countless women throughout history who have been discarded, ignored, maligned, or used as a means to an end.
Monstrous in form, Terry’s work is titled Leviathan, referencing the biblical sea creature and the chaos and annihilation it wrought, as well as being a metaphor for the power of the state and the systems within which we operate. The work establishes a tension between the forms of mounds (a landscape that has historically been portrayed as feminine and passive), and the images’ origins - a pile of car tyres, which references conventions of masculine identity, such as cars, industry, production and commerce. Feminist film theory is a significant influence, particularly the film Aliens (1986). Sigourney Weaver’s gender-defying portrayal of Ellen Ripley as an intelligent and non-sexualised female protagonist had a significant impact on Terry at 22 years old. The film contrasts Ripley’s nurturing motherhood with the monstrous force of the alien Queen, connoting the “duality of female power as both life-giving and destructive.” Both the film and Terry’s work are critical of patriarchal and corporate structures which devalue women and exploit life for profit. Where Emma Cook’s work engages with the personal and her own lived experience, Terry asks us to zoom out and to examine the systems of which we are all a part and entangled and the manner in which we both resist and collude in these structures.
Text by Kari Schmidt
Linda Cook, founding member of the Women’s Work Art Collective
Jocelyn Harris, founding member of the Dunedin Collective for Women, Intersectional Feminism in Dunedin 2018
