1994

That’s such a pretty dress, dear Canberra Contemporary Art Space 3 Manuka ACT Australia

Tottie, Edith, Merle, Queenie and Olive. What do we make of these names? Who are these women? is the title of the catalogue essay written by Elin Howe.. An except from this essay is ‘ Fiona Davies works in that space of uncertainty with the residue of this generation of women’s culture by deploying it to invoke both the frailty and power of their collective history. Working from an actual photograph of a gas cooking demonstration organised by the gas company for the Housewives Progressive Association in the 1930s, she deliberately destabilises the formula of patriarchal history. Focusing on the nameless women in the front row of the audience and creating an individual but shared history for them, Davies refuses the directives coming from the existing story constructed according to patriarchies rules. The scant information available about this photograph relates to the active individuals in the image - Miss Portia Geach ( President Housewives Progressives Association and Miss D. Banks (conducting the demonstration).The women sitting in the audience have been homogenised under the label housewives. Clearly involved in unpaid ( and therefore undervalued) work they become superfluous to an historical system which works to render then nameless and silence their stories. they become just housewives.

Cover of the catalogue - image from the Hood Collection at the state library of NSW, names written by June Bonnie Davies