AT HOME archive

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BACKGROUND Well-known for long-term projects, Jones uses personal stories and memories to explore desire, attraction and sexual selection by utilising a wide range of practices (performance, theatre, dance and then video: single channel works and more elaborate installations).The AT HOME series Archive includes digital prints from 35mm slide documentation and original writings, drawings, posters and other ephemera from the At Home series (1978-80) with experimental recombinant versions of the works in a database developed by Lisa Cianci as part of her PhD on new strategies for online archiving of ephemeral artworks.CONTRIBUTION The research involved not only selecting a very few artefacts to represent the essence of each work but also display options to enhance their display beyond academic representations. This is a huge issue for many of the temporal feminist works of the 70s and 80s. Curator Kyla McFarlane enabled a focus on research into the nature of contemporary archiving for ephemeral works (performance, video installation) and addressing the unavailability of original technologies for archiving past works using the template created Cianci, to test its viability within the framework of this celebration of the radical women who, at the time, "were at the forefront of experimental art practice". Moreover, she says the works still have relevance. "Women are still struggling on lots of the same issues. There is still not pay parity and figures show that women are under-represented in exhibitions and biennales," says McFarlane. "In art schools there seem to be way more women students but then where do these women go?"
SIGNIFICANCE The significance of this exhibition is attested to in that it became the first of many revitalising the relationship of feminism for women artists (e.g. LIP Anthology forums by Vivian Ziherl around the world). As such they are important to international discussion on feminism and art. Reviews Artlink (31.4 2011), The Age (12 Oct 2011).