Loud and Luminous | Online Exhibition - Week 4

Loud and Luminous | Online Exhibition - Week 4

Loud and Luminous, 2020 Theme - Equality. Celebrating 100 Female Photographers. 

This week we feature artists Ilana Rose, Jacqui Dean, Jasmine Carey, Jennifer Blau, Jenny Templin, Judy Hudson, Julie Ewing, Julie Sundberg, Karlina Mitchell and Kate Baker. 

  Ilana Rose





Ilana Rose


The Mildura United under 10’s soccer club, is an inclusive sports club providing equal opportunities for girls and boys, indigenous and non-indigenous children to come together in the spirit of sportsmanship and unity. I was commissioned by the Indigenous Unit of the Victorian Department of Justice to produce an exhibition highlighting the Department’s programs running throughout Victorian in response to the roll out of the Koori Court System. Over 6 years I travelled throughout Victoria documenting Indigenous Leaders, children, volunteers, health workers, police and indigenous communities. The photographs were exhibited throughout Victoria culminating in a 100-photograph exhibition in Federation Square Australia for Reconciliation Day 2005.


 

 

 



Jacqui Dean ‘We are Equal’

‘We are Equal’ explores perspectives of gender, particularly on gender based differences in status and power and symbols that represent the class system. The bowler hat once defined British businessmen, bankers and civil servants. It was initially designed as a working/safety hat and is also worn by the Orangemen in Ireland. In South America the bowler hat is a symbol of fertility. The boy and girl depicted here (Teddy and Siena) are cousins. They share the bowler hat to symbolise equal opportunities. This is a good investment for our future. Every boy, girl, man and woman should share the same opportunities to reach their full potential.

 

 



Jasmine Carey

When I hear the term Equality, I get the feeling of constraint and restriction. It’s not just about being even. It’s deeper than that. A bubble, a symbolic expression of balance. Where powerful elements can form together harmoniously creating the most delicate, synergistic relationship of Equality. Much like a bubble, Each of us have components that are critical to our existence. Each of us are fluid. Each of us are individual. Each of us are unique. Each of us are irreplaceable. Each of us can change. Each of us are supported by our environment. Each of us are untamed and wild, with an unspoken freedom. Each of us can stand alone and we can stand together. We are all also complementary. We are all also the contrary. We are all of these. Yet we are collectively all the same.




Jennifer Blau

Earlier this year I met Laura when I made a series of portraits at a women’s refuge in Sydney. I hoped to acknowledge the women’s beauty, strength and resilience, to lift their self-image during traumatic circumstances. Laura’s portrait conveys to me a quiet dignity despite the hurt she experienced in an abusive, controlling marriage without freedom or financial independence. Her husband told her, ‘If you’re with me, you don’t need anything.’ She soon found, ‘I had no voice, I was in his hands.’ Sadly, Laura’s situation represents many women’s reality of gendered inequity, still so pervasive in Australian society.


Jenny Templin 



Judy Hudson, Botanicus x equitas


Botanicus x equitas is a resilient and vigorous cultivar which will flourish in all conditions when treated with respect, kindness and dignity.

This hardy genus found worldwide, will reach its full potential when given space to grow and will respond extremely well to being nourished with compassion and encouragement to thrive.

When optimum growing conditions are met, you will be rewarded with the most stunning blooms!




Julie Ewing 


Charlie is confident within, softly spoken, arty, musical, has a passion for suits and is non-binary. Born Sophie, and adopting the name Charlie with the decision to live life as non-gender specific. Despite confidence and ease, choices are questioned in certain surroundings, when faced with male /female bathroom options in particular, with those that have long connected with Charlie's birth gender and daily at an all-girls school.

This is early days, a shadow persists connecting past with present, identity questioned by choices, options and opinions.

Photographic images and symbolism used to convey Confusion, Realisation, Acceptance.




Julie Sundberg

In another time, in another place.

In my mother’s hometown, Broken Hill, there was a union rule that married women could not work. Accordingly, higher education for girls was not pursued unless your family could afford boarding school in Adelaide or Sydney - out of the question for a working class girl such as my mother. This inequality had obvious and dramatic consequences for female ambition. My mother, who dreamt of being a doctor, left school at 15 and worked as a doctor’s secretary. She married at 19 with two children following swiftly. When mining slowed down in Broken Hill, my family left for Adelaide in 1954.

During those early years in Adelaide the fallout from the limitations on my mother manifested itself in depression, but both my mother and my father still held onto the ingrained gender roles of our hometown. Much later, at the age of 50, my mother studied art and design but the enduring legacy of their upbringing was that my mother’s creative endeavours were undervalued and seen as hobbies. She never dared push herself, held strangely captive by the values of a place she didn’t live in and a time that wasn’t hers.

Left: My mother performing in The Desert Song, aged 16. Right: My mother, aged 89.





Karlina Mitchell, I come as One, I stand as Ten Thousand


Equality is this evasive thing that seems to always be in the distance, we edge closer with every generation. My daughter Charlie looks off in the distance, not smiling as little girls and women are always asked to do. Charlie comes from a lineage of strong women, women who have fought adversity, women of colour, women who are with her as she navigates this world. As the great Maya Angelou said ‘But for the sacrifices made by some of your ancestors, you would not be here; they have paid for you...bring them on the stage with you; let their distant voices add timbre and strength to your words.’

 



Kate Baker


One of my great loves in life has been getting to know my children and getting to know children generally, which is a relatively new experience for me. I find all children fascinating as subjects, but young girls have a potency all of their own, a almost ancient sense of self-assured power. How our society manages to undermine this as they grow into women is evident everywhere. I love capturing this primal essence in my work – it is so indisputable when captured. I hope one day all the children and in particular girls I photograph can look back and see that power and beauty within them and how innate it is.