Celebrating Women - Curator Lucy Grosz

2025CurrentUpcoming

20 Aug

Celebrating Women

20 - 31 August 2025
Opening Night
Friday 22 August | 6 - 8 pm
G1

Curatorial statement

Curator: Lucy Grosz

‘Celebrating women’ is an exhibition that collates the work of esteemed female artists including Amanda Schlesinger Goss, Charlotte Clemens, Judith Clifton, Kathryn Rae, Shelley O’Keefe, Rita Sciacca, and Helen Shields. These works, spanning multiple mediums examine themes of motherhood, identity, and feminism. Amanda Schlesinger Goss’s work challenges traditional ideas of womanhood, illustrating different iterations of womanhood printed onto aprons, a marker of women’s life in enforced domestic spheres. Charlotte Clemens’ collage work deals with motherhood and identity. Judith Clifton’s sculptures and teapot cosy illustrate the difficult positions women find their selves in throughout their life. Kathryn Rae’s work takes inspiration from social media, responding to the question ‘Women: would you rather be alone in a forest with a bear or a male stranger?’ Her illustrated bear is cosy and welcoming. Shelley O’Keefe’s work is intense, personal, yonic, and sacred. Helen Shield’s work is a welcome addition of hard edge abstraction, an artistic tradition that has commonly excluded women. Her work is bold, vibrant, and fun. Rita Sciacca’s work uses the traditional medium of embroidery to craft abstract work remanent of womanhood. Together these works create an evocative exhibition that praises the varied artistic achievements of these women.

Artists

Amanda Schlesinger-Goss, Charlotte Clemens, Judith Clifton, Helga Shields, Kathryn Rae, Shelley O’Keefe and Rita Sciacca

Pre-sales

Featured

Shelley O’Keefe | Blood

A$550.00

collage- paper, ink, cloth

78 x 62 cm

Shelley O’Keefe | There are no wise men in the stable

A$630.00

Charcoal on paper

78 x 62 cm

Shelley O’Keefe | Stain

A$400.00

collage - paper, ink and cloth

62 x 44 cm

Kat Rae | 103 and Counting

A$475.00

Lithograph and lipstick on Somerset

38 × 48 cm

#ichoosethebear series

Australia is experiencing a spike in gendered violence, with 103 women killed in 2024 alone.

A question went viral on social media: Who would you prefer to be alone in the woods with, a man or a bear? Women's answers included, "A bear, because if I got attacked by a bear, people would believe me," and "No one would ask me what I was wearing when the bear attacked me".

Kat Rae made this commemorative print series while counting dead women.

Kat Rae | 89 and Counting

A$475.00

Lithograph and lipstick on Somerset

32 x 28 cm

#ichoosethebear series

Kat Rae made this commemorative print series while counting dead women.

Kat Rae | 74 and Counting

A$475.00

Lithograph and lipstick on Somerset

32 x 28 cm

#ichoosethebear series

Kat Rae made this commemorative print series while counting dead women.

Kat Rae | Introducing Theodore Growler

A$475.00

Lithograph, screenprint and lipstick on Somerset

32 x 28 cm

#ichoosethebear series

Kat Rae made this commemorative print series while counting dead women.

Charlotte Clemens | Baby Blue

A$950.00

Photographic silkscreen

82 x 62 x 3 cm

Charlotte Clemens | Space Pace

A$950.00

Photographic silkscreen

82 x 80 x 3 cm

Helga Shields | Baby Elephant Walk

A$400.00

acrylic on ply and canvas

54 x 54 x 5.5 cm

Helga Shields | Samba

A$300.00

acrylic on timber cradle

48 x 33 x 5.5 cm

Helga Shields | Bossa Nova

A$300.00

acrylic on canvas

44 x 33.5 x 5.5 cm

Rita Sciacca | Asymmetry 3

A$450.00

Graphite pencils, Embroidery thread, Fabriano Paper, Embroidery Hoop, Perspex Box

300 x 300 x 75 cm

Rita Sciacca | Asymmetry 4

A$350.00

Graphite pencil, Embroidery thread, Fabriano Paper Embroidery Hoop, Perspex Box

300 x 300 x 75 cm

Rita Sciacca | Asymmetry 2

A$450.00

Graphite pencil, and embroidery thread on Fabriano Paper, Embroidery hoop, Perspex box

300 x 300 x 75 cm

Amanda Schlesinger-Goss | Cross With You

A$490.00

Perspex and plastic/foil contact

15 x 1925 cm

Cross With You Remix 2025 is a text based work that explores the tension between the surface and sentiment, language and legibility, domesticity and dissent. Spoken in a female

voice, the work plays with the quiet codes of gendered emotion and navigating historical

social norms and the subtle terrain between the sign and the signified.

In this work the artist has used the word “cross” as a substitute for the word “angry”; a word

rarely permitted to women in its full force. Historically cross has been allowed; “a bit cross”,

“peeved” “ ill tempered”. These diminutives are the sanctioned registers of female

displeasure; modulated, softened, palatable. Rage, however, is unseemly. Cross With You

remix 2025 names this repression while inhabiting its language revealing the frictions and

polarities that live within intimacy; blame, affection, resistance and longing. Originally created in 2003 in wood veneer and mixed media, the 2025 remix transforms the work through new materials of perspex and rose gold foil veneer bringing reflectivity and ornamentation into dialogue with the text content.

The mirrored surface implicates the viewer, collapsing the distance between artwork and

audience. In this way the piece becomes a gestalt; a whole greater than its verbal parts,

where language , reflection and materiality converge. In Remix 2025 the artist personally reclaims the joy of pink and shiny, that has been long

repressed.

Judith Clifton | Simply Cosy

from A$275.00

framed giclee print

61 x 46 cm

Sold Out

Judith Clifton | No Super, No Home

A$0.00

cast bronze, wood, stone

28.5 x 45.5 x 27 cm

Judith Clifton | Balancing Act

A$4,000.00

cast bronze

215 x 460 x 70 cm