By Callum Ludwig
International Women’s Day is being celebrated on Wednesday 8 March, shining a light on the successes and contributions achieved as well as the challenges and injustice faced by women worldwide.
YAVA and the Warburton WaterWheel’s art galleries will be hosting a poignant display of artwork capturing the many themes of the life of women in an exhibition spanning both locations.
Wilani Van Wyk-Smit helped curate and contribute to the exhibition and said it was envisioned more than a year ago and when the potential for the sister exhibitions arose, it developed from there.
“The theme was quite open-ended, it’s each artist’s interpretation o what it means to be a woman and that’s why the variety of the works is so curious and beautiful, it opens a lot of questions,” she said.
“We’ve got artworks of very traditional womanly roles as carers and acknowledging those traditions, and we have other themes where people challenge those and challenge the way women are seen as sexual creatures.”
Ms Van Wyk-Smit experimented with augmented reality through her pieces. Stunning by themselves, viewers can scan a QR code with their phones and hold them up to each piece, triggering an animation within the art.
Ms Van Wyk-Smit said the pieces ‘Spinning plates to serve you’ and ‘Falling through time to catch you’ is about asking what the different realities of being a woman are for everyone.
“One does touch on the maternal line, and how our women have taught their daughters how to be a woman, and how our thoughts of what it is to be a good woman are continually challenged because some things need to change, some need to be erased, but we need to learn lessons,” she said.
“The other is about feeling that we are not enough, that we don’t have enough time to do the things that are expected of us or that we want to do. Society tells us we are not enough, but we need a tribe of women around us who remind us that we are enough.”
“We have many spinning plates in the air, always all the things that we need to do and we need someone who will catch us every time that we fall.”
Artist Ali Griffin focused on domestic violence with her series of artwork, with alarming statistics, disillusion with the way domestic violence is portrayed in the media and frustration with the way the legal system handles it all consistent themes within the pieces. When the YAVA brief came in, she was kicked into action.
Ali Griffin said she made seven different artworks because it takes on average seven attempts for a woman to leave a relationship where she is experiencing violence before she can leave for good.
“The stars need to align for her to be able to get out. She has to find somewhere safe, affordable, and have her partner not catch her as she’s running out the door… it’s way more complicated than any of us can imagine,” she said.
“Art can touch people on a deeper level. I hope my artworks shine a light on the issue, communicate it in a different way. But more than that, I hope I don’t see another post of another woman who has died at the hands of her partner.”
Visitors to YAVA and the Warburton WaterWheel will also be able to get a preview of the art on display at the other venue, with a slideshow presented, encouraging attendees to journey across to see them in person for themselves.
Ms Van Wyk-Smit said people are starting to acknowledge what art can do to push a message, such as for International Women’s Day.
“It’s becoming more relevant, it was always nice to have but now it’s really part of the healing and recovery of being a whole person We have seen government push towards programmes for people who have been through traumatic events to use art as recovery, such as the Black Saturday bushfires,” she said.
“When that happens, it pulls together people who don’t think they’re artists, but they become an artist as they express themselves, meaning art becomes more important for them in their lives.”
Both exhibitions will be on display until Sunday 26 March.
