This month sees the full roll-out of CoUNTess: Spoiling Illusions Since 2008 (and yes, the capitalisation in the name is absolutely intentional!) with its Sydney and Brisbane launches coming up in September and October. The book received an enthusiastic response when it was first launched last month at the Creative Spaces Summit in Adelaide and in late July at Community Hall in the heart of the Melbourne Now exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).
CoUNTess: Spoiling Illusions Since 2008 comes from the Countess.Report, ‘an ongoing independent artist-run research project’. The new book details the extensive data that exposes the sad truth of inequity in gender representation in visual arts in Australia. The book also discusses the important history and significant impact of the Countess data collection and analysis project. It is a salutary benchmark for accountability in the arts as it dramatically quantifies the status of women and non-binary artists.
While this uniquely Australian project highlights the dire state of gender equity in the art world it does so with personality. Those decades of deep-dive data are brought to life in bold and brash colour by authors Melinda Rackham and Elvis Richardson. This is no dry statistical survey – this is commentary of the best kind, enlivened with their own biting humour and pithy observations.
‘My motivation to start the Countess blog was to publicly call out gender discrimination, and I saw numbers and data as the way to do that,’ says Richardson. ‘In 2008 blogs were an exciting new way to broadcast this kind of research, as you could do it independently, and it didn’t require money or space to do it as blogs were free. Of course, my own frustrating experience of trying to live and thrive as an artist was dependent upon having money, space, affiliation and time.’
The blog was cheeky, irreverent, provocative and important. And, in the beginning, it was published anonymously. ‘I certainly wanted Countess to make an impact, but knew I was limited by my own resources,’ explains Richardson. The research is now well-established as the ongoing project managed by a collective.
‘Through the legacy vision and practical financial support of the Sheila Foundation, the blog became the 2016 Countess Report where I counted exhibitions nationally over a period of 12 months in an effort to set up a benchmark to measure future data. I hoped the process would give institutions the idea to do their own data collection. Since 2017 I have been working with Amy Prcevich and Miranda Samuels. We produced the 2019 Countess Report and are currently calculating the 2024 Countess Report. In 2022 we welcomed a new member, Shevaun Wright.’
The collective also invites special guest collaborators, such as Melinda Rackham who came onboard as co-author of the book.
‘Working with Melinda has been amazing,’ says Richardson. ‘I have learned so much from her writing experience and the way she so expertly framed the many Countess elements and activities in a wider cultural context.’
Going beyond the data, the book offers thoughtful insights and suggests positive actions to bring about much-needed change. The statistical analyses are combined with queer and feminist theory to demonstrate the systemic problems from the education of artists, the role of galleries and museums, the structure of art prizes, and the magazines, curators, collectors and philanthropists who contribute to an art world where women and non-binary people miss out.
Speaking at the Adelaide launch, the authors said that ‘even if an exhibition has an equal 50-50 representation of male and female (including non-binary) artists, it’s always the men who are featured in the publicity, who appear on the catalogue cover, and whose works are mentioned in the reviews’.
CoUNTess: Spoiling Illusions about the Arts Since 2008 also looks at the lives of those underrepresented artists, writers and academics who are striving to navigate an asymmetrical art world, where the odds are statistically weighted against them.
The book itself is a work of art with sophisticated typography, great design and a vivid colour palette. There is also a gallery section with wonderful images and even a bookmark that serves a dual purpose. (You’ll have to buy the book to see.)
‘Putting the gallery section together with Elvis was great fun, including artists from several generations who have inspired, surprised and challenged us. Some are well-known, some have been underrepresented, and we would have loved to include many more. Readers should see this as a conversation starter and not as a definitive list,’ says Rackham.
‘I also love how our designers Elliott Bryce Foulkes and Maria Smit created the shiny silver gallery section as almost a mirror – so that when readers look at these works we hope they can see part of themselves and their lives reflected,’ she says.
Interestingly, Richardson acknowledges that the conversations have changed significantly since the project began in 2008. ‘At the time, feminism was considered flawed and over, and calling out institutional bias was relegated to the fringes and just dismissed as “sour grapes”. Today, by comparison, the language has changed around how we identify. Artists and many who work at art institutions – as well as growing numbers of the public – now expect and demand diverse representation as an integral and ethical part of the exhibition process, particularly in our public galleries and museums.’
The findings go beyond showing how many artists have been sidelined and underrepresented to consider those who have been written out or forgotten. This is something that particularly moved Rackham.
‘I was horrified to discover in my research how many women have disappeared from history in the past 50 years. That’s not just women artists, but the work of women’s art collectives, the texts of women writers, the work of women curators who really instigated great change such as Kiffy Rubbo at George Paton Gallery, the amazing works of the Tin Sheds [Gallery] Sydney and the posters revolution, and the ventures in new online territories such as the manifestos of cyberfeminist collective VNS Matrix,’ she says. ‘Women do groundbreaking work, then it takes a different generation of women to excavate it and bring it back to the public eye.’
The Countess.Report is an incredibly valuable resource because they throw an unflinching spotlight on the structures and frameworks that govern artistic production and legitimation in the Australian contemporary art-world. The research is self-published in quadrennial sector-wide reports and makes illuminating – and alarming – reading. But life is not just about the data: ‘Change is not a word but a daily action!’ urges Rackham vehemently. ‘And we need to save the planet, adds Richardson.
CoUNTess: Spoiling Illusions about the Arts Since 2008 is available now.
236 pages, 200 x 280 x 12mm, $70 (waged) $55 (unwaged)
