★★★★: Exhilarating doco reveals untold history of Australian women painters

By Melinda Houston

February 25, 2022 — 7.47pm

The Exhibitionists ★★★★

The main problem with The Exhibitionists – the final in a suite of programs from the ABC in support of the National Gallery of Australia’s Know My Name initiative – is that it leaves you wanting more.
Know My Name is a series of exhibitions, education programs, partnerships and creative collaborations designed to bring Australia’s abundance of female artists to the attention of the general public. For the national broadcaster this has included two terrific standalone documentaries – Step Into Paradise, about Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson, Bronwyn Oliver: The Shadows Within – and now this engrossing whistlestop introduction to, well, everyone else.

The other, minor, problem is that the factual content sits within a scripted scaffolding involving four friends, played by Mandy McElhinney, Bridie Carter, Bessie Holland and Veronica Milsom, hanging out in the NGA after dark and talking about female artists. It’s not really clear what purpose it serves. Certainly, the actual meat and potatoes here – the stories of Australia’s female artists from the late 19th century through to the present day – needs no embellishment.

We start with Jane Sutherland, one of our finest Impressionists and a long-standing member of the Heidelberg School. Never heard of her? Me neither. But that’s precisely the point. As we view her work, hear a range of engaging experts discuss it, and learn a little of her story you just keep asking yourself: why doesn’t everybody know about this?

Her paintings are exquisite and, like the old line about Ginger Rogers – who did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in heels – Sutherland’s is also a story of not just matching the blokes creatively but overcoming substantial hardships to do so. For instance, while the chaps were camping out, frolicking nude in billabongs and yarning around campfires, the women painting en plein air alongside them had to pack up their kit and traipse back to the train station at the end of every day, all in the service of decorum.

And while the artists featured here are eclectic and diverse, the burden of female-ness is a common thread. Archival shots of women in the 1970s show grubby toddlers scratching at their calves as they’re trying to work. After the redoubtable Nora Heysen won the Archibald in 1938, the Women’s Weekly ran a big feature on her – showcasing her favourite recipes. (The headline? Girl Painter Who Won Art Prize Is Also Good Cook.) Regardless of their achievements or capabilities, female artists have always been judged as female first, artist second – and very few have been able to escape the demands of marriage and motherhood.

There’s also information which you’d call shocking – except, sadly, it’s not – about the ways works by women are undervalued financially, not just culturally. Here the gender pay gap sits at around 42 per cent, while research shows people will judge the same painting of less value – monetarily and artistically – if they’re told it’s painted by a woman, rather than a man. And let’s not get started on the things men have said – and are still saying – about their female colleagues. The flagrant, unashamed sexism is gobsmacking.

But despite all that – or perhaps because of it – The Exhibitionists is, in the end, utterly exhilarating. The experts (all women) are as passionate as they are knowledgeable. The backstories of these exceptional artists are uniformly captivating: rollicking tales of daring and adventure, rule-breaking and boundary-smashing. And the works themselves, across a huge range of styles, are quite fabulous. Hopefully many, many people will come away from this knowing these women’s names. What would be even better is a series of documentaries devoted to each of them. They certainly deserve it.

The Exhibitionists is on ABC, Tuesday, 8.30pm