Ava Van Aurich – Modern Amazons

In parallel with the concerns of the exhibition de-centre re-centre, which examines the conventions of portraiture, and issues of place and belonging in First Nations, diasporic, and queer communities, this event explores a history of lesbian portraiture.

Join Ava van Aurich, a postgraduate in Humanities at UWA as she raises discussion on the depictions of lesbians in portraiture photography, most usually by lesbian artists. Work of by Joan E. Biren or JEB, an American feminist photographer and film-maker, who dramatizes the lives of LGBTIQA+ people in diverse contexts, legendary Diane Arbus (1923–1971), American freelance photographer Molly Landreth, whose large-format portraits address topics such as gender and sexuality in the LGBTIQA+. community, along with Cyndy Warwick, non-binary and intersex artist Del LaGrace Volcano, Meryl Meisler, Donna Gottschalk, and Lydia Garnett's Close Shave series from 2022 will be considered, along with the extensive photographs of lesbian communes and separatism in NSW from the 1970s to the present. van Aurich will consider ‘the ways in which such portraits challenge conventional notions of family, home, identity, and belonging’.

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Ava van Aurich is a postgraduate in Humanities at the University of Western Australia. Her research focuses on the lesbian community in the past and present—with an emphasis on notions of identity, difference, belonging, and safety—utilising transformative and post-oppositional frameworks. She has a background in grassroots advocacy for women’s and LGBTIQA+ issues, archiving, and oral history. Ava’s broader research interests include social movements, feminist methodologies and ethics, LGBTIQA+ history, and women's art.

Campus Partner: Gender Studies, UWA

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Image Credit:  Opening night, de-centre re-centre, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, 2025, Ilkka K Photography