31 July - 10 October 2010

NEW MEDIA SPACE

ANTHEA BEHM: THE CHRISSY DIARIES

Anthea Behm is a visual artist working with performance, video and photography to explore what separates and connects the categories of high and popular culture. Through her practice she seeks to question how forms belonging to these categories  - such as art, theory and entertainment – are relevant to understanding subjectivity and society. Taking such forms as microcosms revealing the social conditions of their production, Behm is concerned with how these forms contribute to the dominant hegemony and how this may be subverted.

Anthea Behm

The Chrissy Diaries 2005-09

Synchronised 4-channel video installation

36min loop.

Image © 2010 Anthea Behm

7 August - 19 September 2010

REGIONAL ART SPACE

RED SHED: LEAH-NICOLE TORBAY

Leah-Nicole Torbay is an artist based in Armidale, NSW. Her exhibition at WPCC will transform the Regional Art Space into "a brainstormed chamber of eclectic ideas, offering a new perspective on what it means to live in country Australia."

Leah-Nicole Torbay

Red Shed 2010

Acrylic on plywood

20 x 25cm

Image © 2010 Leah-Nicole Torbay

14 August - 3 October 2010

MAIN GALLERY

WOMEN TRANSPORTED: LIFE IN AUSTRALIA'S CONVICT FEMALE FACTORIES

Women Transported explores convict women’s experience in the 12 Female Factories established in early colonial Australia. The exhibition reveals the personal accounts of these women and documents their skills across two hundred different occupations including as dairymaids, housemaids, washerwomen, weavers, lace-makers, seamstresses, teachers, fishing net makers and shoe binders. Contrary to the myths, only a handful were prostitutes and the majority were literate.

Their heroic lives are told and celebrated through films, interactives and some of the earliest colonial artefacts in the country including a laundry-stomper, spindle, book-marks and even a christening gown.

A University of Western Sydney and Parramatta Heritage Centre partnership. This exhibition is supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of Australian cultural material across Australia.

Parramatta Female Factory, undated

Society of Australian Genealogists collection

Image © 2010 SAG

14 August - 21 November 2010

PROJECT SPACE

MAX DUPAIN: ON ASSIGNMENT

A new touring exhibition from the National Archives of Australia features many Max Dupain photographs that have never been seen before.

While Dupain is now famous for his artistic photographs, over the years he also used his camera to earn a living, working for Commonwealth government departments and companies such as CSR Limited.

The new exhibition features eye-catching examples of his government images from the National Archives’ collection, along with photographs he took for CSR Limited from the Noel Butlin Archives Centre at the Australian National University, Canberra. They include corporate and advertising shots, as well as images of life on the canefields.

Max Dupain

Boys playing cricket at the beach, Melbourne, 1946

Silver gelatin photograph

Image courtesy National Archives of Australia