In December 2017, Nina Ross, Jessie Scott and I conducted two surveys – one of artists/arts workers who are primary carers about experiences of exclusion in the art world. The other was a short but broad survey of galleries and institutions which asked a series of simple, open questions about how they accommodate artist parents. Our aim was to find out what measures they were taking to accommodate artists/arts workers with families, and how artist parents were working around the restrictions both parenting, and the art world might be placing on their practices.
In February 2018, we presented the results of our findings at the conference Women* Art and Feminism in Australia Since 1970. Since then, we have produced a written report and devised a number of recommendations for including artist/parents based on measuring feedback of artist/art workers/parents against gallery self-reporting. This report and its recommendations can be found on our project website.
Since publishing these results and recommendations, we have maintained an ongoing conversation which is now 5 years and counting. Extracts of this conversation can be found in the Women’s Art Register Bulletin issue #68.
We have also written an essay based on our findings, titled Soiling the White Cube, which is to be published in an upcoming book of essays titled Care, Ethics and Art (Routledge).
