The creativity that runs in families is rarely the subject of artistic exploration in Australia, and is often restricted to a handful of well-known examples (the Boyd dynasty, more recently painters Michael Johnson and Matthew Johnson). Perhaps due to a small population and fragmented settler histories, there has been a stronger drive for innovation over tradition. Yet for most artists, a learnt way of being, an approach or mindset, even as a reaction against a family model, may be at the heart of art-making. In recent months, confronted with the failing health of my own mother, I recalled attending art classes with her as a child. That quiet and focussed time allowed me to be part of a creative journey that directly stimulated the beginnings of my own.
The creative connection in families, specifically between daughters and mothers, was at the heart of ‘Daughters Mothers’, a gentle yet revelatory exploration within the context of the Sydney College of the Arts initiative, ‘Future Feminist Archive: Contemporary Art and Feminism’ (on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of International Women’s Year). In the catalogue, curator Jacqueline Millner contextualised ‘Daughters Mothers’ within other Australian intergenerational exchanges, including Vivienne Binns’s Mothers’ Memories, Others’ Memories, Brenda Croft’s The Big Deal is Black (1993), and Ponch Hawkes’s photographic series Our Mums and Us (1977).
The daughters and mothers were Judy Watson (b.1959) and Joyce Watson (b.1935), Alison Clouston (b.1957) and Joan Clouston (b.1926), Toni Warburton (b.1951) and Enid ‘Soot’ Warburton (1917-2014), Sue Pedley (b.1954) and Peggy Pedley (b.1924). The juxtaposition of the work of each pair was intriguing for the creativity ‘back story’ of each of the known artists, within what Millner referred to as