‘Puncturing the Mask of Civility’, curated by Dr Llewellyn Negrin and featuring the work of eleven Tasmanian women artists will open at Runnymede in December.
The exhibition, Puncturing the Mask of Civility, curated by Dr Llewellyn Negrin and featuring the work of eleven Tasmanian women artists will open at Runnymede in December. The exhibition takes its cue from 18th and 19th century manuals and advice books on women’s conduct and commentary by authors such as Jane Austen and how the lives of Runnymede’s dynamic women may be measured against these strictures. According to Negrin,
We get glimpses of the tenuousness of this polite façade from some of the women who lived at Runnymede. For instance, Dorothea Pitcairn was involved in her husband’s campaign to end the transportation of convicts to Van Diemen’s Land and one of her daughters, Eliza, was described as spirited and ‘as strong-willed as her father’. Anna Maria Nixon, while often judgemental of the convicts in Van Diemen’s Land, expressed sympathy for her cook who had been an ex-convict. She also bemoaned the lack of provision for girls’ education in the colony and sought to find funds for the establishment of a school for girls. There is also an account of Eliza Bayley, wife of the sea captain Charles Bayley, accompanying him on one of his voyages on a whaling ship while her sister-in-law Emma Bayley even gave birth on a whaling ship!
It is these cracks in the mask of civility which the artists in this exhibition seek to bring to light. Just as the flaws in the decorative friezes, wallpapers and floor coverings in Runnymede reveal the fragility of the veneer of civilisation which it seeks to present, so the works in this exhibition prise open the fissures to disclose what lies beneath.
The exhibition features the work of Ruth Frost, Denise Rathbone, Linda Erceg, Jan Dineen, Chantale Delrue, Frances Watson, Jane Slade, Christal Berg, Janelle Mendham, Morag Porteous and Janine Combes with musical contributions by Anne Marshall, Christine Akerman and Llewellyn Negrin.
The exhibition will open on 15 December 2024 and will run until 2 March 2025.
To tour the exhibition with one of the artists, please book here: https://nationaltrusttas.rezdy.com/680355/puncturing-the-mask-of-civility
