The australian Girls Own Gallery (aGOG) was a commercial

art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The long ...

that operated in Leichhardt Street,

Kingston Kingston may refer to: Places * List of places called Kingston, including the six most populated: ** Kingston, Jamaica ** Kingston upon Hull, England ** City of Kingston, Victoria, Australia ** Kingston, Ontario, Canada ** Kingston upon Thames, ...

Canberra Canberra ( ; ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the Federation of Australia, federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's list of cities in Australia, largest in ...

from 1989 to 1998. The gallery was owned and operated by former

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

curator Helen Maxwell, and exhibited the work of women artists almost exclusively.

History

The gallery opened in 1989. The first exhibition at aGOG was ''Les femmes formidables 1'' which ran from 16 March – 19 April 1989 and featured the work of five female artists:

Banduk Marika Banduk Mamburra Wananamba Marika (13 October 1954 – 12 July 2021), known after her death as Dr B Marika, was an artist, printmaker and environmental activist from Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia, who was dedicated to the developme ...

Barbara Hanrahan Barbara Janice Hanrahan (6 September 1939 – 1 December 1991) was an Australian artist, printmaker and writer whose work featured relationships, women, women's issues and Feminist movements and ideologies, feminist ideology. Hanrahan was also ...

, Joyce Allen, Lidia Groblicka and Kate Lohse. Art historian and art critic

Sasha Grishin Alexander "Sasha" Dmitrievich Grishin is an Australian art historian, art critic and curator based in Victoria and Canberra. He is known as an art critic, and for establishing the academic discipline of art history at the Australian National Un ...

noted that the represented artists "from an important cross-section of contemporary women

printmaker Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed technique ...

s in Australia". aGOG would exhibit several group and solo shows each year. Represented artists included:

Vivienne Binns Vivienne Joyce Binns (born 1940) is an Australian artist known for her contribution to the Women's Art Movement in Australia, her engagement with feminism in her artwork, and her active advocacy within community arts. She works predominantly i ...

, Pam Debenham,

Judy Horacek Judy Horacek (born 12 November 1961) is an Australian cartoonist, artist, writer and children's book creator. She is best known for her award winning children's picture book '' Where is the Green Sheep?'' with Mem Fox, and her cartoons all over ...

Marie McMahon Marie Elizabeth Rita McMahon (born September 1953) is an Australian artist, known for her paintings, prints, posters, drawings, and design work. Born in Melbourne, she has worked in various communities of Australian Aboriginal people and works in ...

, Patsy Payne, Mitzi Shearer, Ruth Waller, and

Judy Watson Judy Watson (born 1959) is an Australian Waanyi multi-media artist who works in print-making, painting, video and installation. Her work often examines Indigenous Australian histories, and she has received a number of high-profile commissio ...

. In 1992 and 1995, solo exhibitions of the work of

Yolngu The Yolngu or Yolŋu ( or ) are an aggregation of Aboriginal Australian people inhabiting north-eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. ''Yolngu'' means "person" in the Yolŋu languages. The terms Murngin, Wulamba, Yalnuma ...

artist

Nancy Gaymala Yunupingu Nancy Gaymala Yunupingu (1935–2005; also rendered Yunupiŋu) was a senior Yolngu artist and matriarch, who lived in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, Australia. She worked at the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre in Yirrkala, where her work ...

were shown. aGog closed in 1998.

Significance

The gallery was significant because it only represented women artists (although towards the end of its operations the work of men would be very rarely exhibited). Maxwell started the gallery because she felt as that there was a bias against women artists within the art world and she "felt strongly that women didn't get enough of a voice".

Helen Maxwell Gallery

Maxwell went on to open the Helen Maxwell Gallery in Braddon, Canberra, in March 2000. This gallery represented both male and female artists until its closure in January 2010. Tony Coleing,

, Barbie Kjar,

, Patsy Payne and Robin White, and Vera Zulumovski were just some of the artists exhibited in at least 178 exhibitions held there. Exhibitions mounted by this gallery included: *2001: ''Vital Fluids'', a multi-artist exhibition including the work of England Bangala,

Naminapu Maymuru-White Naminapu "Nami" Maymuru-White (born 1952) is a senior Yolŋu artist of North East Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory of Australia. She is known for representing her the songlines of her clan, the Maŋgalili group, especially the stars and ...

, Robin White,

, and Barrupu Yunupingu *2003: ''Groundswell: An exhibition of Aboriginal art'', a multi-artist exhibition at the Helen Maxwell Gallery

History

Significance

Helen Maxwell Gallery

References

Further reading