Girl Masters: Badham/McCartney in conversation with Lauren Matthews.

“A FEMINIST CONVERSATION ASKING WHY MAYBE THERE ARE STILL NO GREAT WOMEN ARTISTS EVEN AFTER ALL THIS TIME”

Tuesday 10 June, 6pm (75 mins)
Queen Victoria Women’s Centre, Melbourne
All Welcome

"It is institutionally made impossible for women to achieve artistic excellence, or success, on the same footing as men."

– Linda Nochin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” (1971)

As a special preview event for the Girl Masters: Badham/McCartney exhibition at the Queen Victoria Women's Centre, join us for a powerhouse conversation between three bold feminist artists whose practices interrogate the very idea of “mastery” in a patriarchal culture.

Dr Lauren McCartney (painting/performance/video artist and misbehaviour specialist),
Van Badham (digital provocateur and internet folk villain), and
Interlocutor: Lauren Matthews (textile artist, trauma researcher, and thread-wielding truth-teller)
come together to unravel the tensions between spectacle and silence, humour and horror, public and private, and to ask:

What happens when women reclaim the word “master” on their own terms?
Can satire and self-display resist the violence of the male gaze?
What does feminist artistic legacy look like when the teacher becomes the student… and vice versa?

This "secondary activation" to the exhibition is a live, unscripted, hilarious and dynamic encounter between three artists whose work spans trauma, trolling, textile, theory and… dachshunds.

Expect big laughs, strong feelings, sharp critique, and an unapologetic celebration of insistently ungreat women - on canvas, on camera, and on their own terms.