March 8 is International Women’s Day, a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. In recognition of International Women’s Day, and to coincide with the Sydney Design Festival – which runs from 2-11 March and has its HQ at the Powerhouse Museum – we asked some of our amazing female curators to tell us about their favourite female designers respresented in the MAAS Collection.
Kristina Stankovski, Assistant Curator
Dr Anne Summers AO is a leading Australian
feminist, writer and social commentator. Summers knitted this Pussyhat — “a brightly
coloured…badge of pride,” as she described it in a Sydney Morning Herald op-ed in February, 2017
— using a pattern designed by Kat Coyle of the Pussyhat Project. A reaction to Donald Trump’s
election, the Pussyhat made its debut in the Women’s March in Washington DC the day after
Trump’s inauguration, and has since been worn at other protests worldwide.
Alysha Buss, Assistant Curator
Iris van Herpen is a significant innovator of
digital techniques and materials in fashion and is known for her interdisciplinary
collaborations. For this Lucid collection dress, van Herpen collaborated with artist, architect
and academic Philip Beesley to investigate,
among many things, how complex curvilinear forms could be translated into repeating cellular
patterns. The resulting free-form hexagonal meshwork patterns create the look of a shimmering,
bubbling, lace-like exoskeleton.
Sarah Reeves, Assistant Curator
In 2012 Marita Cheng was awarded Young
Australian of the Year for her work as a technology entrepreneur and advocate for women in
technology. She is the founder of aubot and Aipoly, two companies dedicated to designing robotic
and technological products to improve the lives of people who are sick, elderly, or living with
disabilities. Cheng is also the founder of Robogals, which aims to teach robotics to girls and
encourage them to pursue careers in engineering. She is just one of the amazing female
scientists and engineers featured in the Museum’s
Experimentations gallery.
Angelique Hutchison, Curator
When she first joined Crown Crystal Glass in 1967, Denise Larcombe was one of only a handful of
female industrial designers working in Australia. The Sydney glass maker Crown Crystal Glass
(Crown Corning from 1972 to 1988) based in Waterloo was the largest and most successful
manufacturer of Australian domestic glassware in the last half of the 20th century. Many of the
company’s award-winning products, designed by Larcombe, can still be found in Australian
households.
Eva Czernis-Ryl, Curator
When the Austrian potter
Lucie Rie (1902-1995) migrated to England
in 1938, she forged her own path creating innovative ceramic vessels rejecting the prevailing
Anglo-Japanese aesthetic led by Bernard Leach. Trained at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, Rie
made thin-walled containers with textured glazes described as ‘breathtaking in originality’ by
the Australian ceramic artist Marea Gazzard in the 1950s. Today, her modernist bowls and bottle
forms are in museums around the world and she is recognised as a pioneer of studio ceramics and
a ‘leader amongst 20th century potters’.
Min-Jung Kim, Curator
Joungmee Do (b.1966) is an established
Korean-Australian jeweller who uses a traditional Korean metal technique called
jjoeumipsa (chiselled inlay). This technique was not taught in the Korean university Do
attended, where western metal smithing dominated. Instead, while a typical stay at home wife in
Korea, Do began learning her signature technique from a master craftsman. In Australia, she
was encouraged to resume her career as an artist.
Tilly Boleyn, Curator
The ‘Women of NASA’ LEGO set features computer scientist and entrepreneur Margaret Hamilton,
astronomer and executive Nancy Grace Roman, astronaut, physicist and entrepreneur Sally Ride and
astronaut, physician and engineer Mae Jemison. These women all battled against the belief, held
by many in the 20th Century, that women should not want to be scientists. They helped begin to
change entrenched attitudes at NASA and beyond. Maia Weinstock, a science writer, pitched the
idea through the LEGO Ideas initiative. It’s only the second ever LEGO set showing women in
professional jobs.
Katie Dyer, Curator Contemporary
Fiona Hall is an artist with a searing
focus who relishes ‘staying with the trouble.’ Hall defies categorisation as she explores
questions of social equity through her use of botanical illustration, photography, craft
techniques, and landscape architecture. Her Xanthorrhoea plant tiara is both unique (only one
other example exists) and it exemplifies her Australian vernacular, humour, and deep concern for
the future of the environment.
Keinton Butler, Senior Curator
In 1952 British sculptor
Mary Gillick designed the first
portrait of Queen Elizabeth II for the obverse of British and Commonwealth coinage. Gillick won
the commission when she was seventy-one years old from a field of seventeen artists, in a
competition conducted by The Royal Mint Advisory Committee. Gillick refined the coin’s design
sixty-three times, and with each variation a new mould and cast was made. Gillick’s design was
seen as unconventional at the time, as it portrayed the Queen uncrowned, with many describing it
as ‘fresh and approachable’.
Jacqui Strecker, Head of Curatorial
Marianne Brandt
was one of the Bauhaus’s most talented students and metalwork designers. Brandt produced a range
functional, geometric-inspired works, including this desk set, that successfully exemplified the
ways in which art and machine technology could come together. Elegant, smooth and streamlined in
appearance, many of the objects she created for use in the modern home or office have become
icons of 20th-century design.
These objects are just a tiny fraction of the incredible female designers whose work is recognised and preserved in the MAAS collection. To explore more, visit our online collection search. And until next year, Happy International Women’s Day everyone!