Artist fights against age expectations

A REGIONAL-based creative will mark her return to commercial gallery exhibiting this weekend as part of the Art Gallery of Ballarat’s Backspace.

After more than a decade using street art to explore and push back against the societal restrictions on mature-aged women, Dr Deborah Clark will be translating her favoured themes into a more personal showing, with her upcoming exhibition Into the Maw.

“It’s very much a personal narrative,” she said. “It’s exploring the time I spent at the Ballarat Regional Integrated Cancer Centre for treatment. But it’s not about illness.

“Most of my work is about reframing how older women are represented, so it’s more of a story looking at those positive aspects of being an older woman.

“The images are sort of fantastical, surreal images of being caught up in a medical setting. I was able to use that art practice to process and negotiate the whole situation.”

On show as part of the Ballarat Seniors Festival program, the exhibition will feature nearly 20 works created over the past three years since Wood’s stay at BRICC.

Exhibiting in gallery spaces between the 1980s until the early 2000s, Wood returned to the artmaking scene around 2010, shifting gears to focus on paste up street art.

It’s fitting her return to established venues should happen at the Art Gallery of Ballarat; she created her first street piece adjacent to the building.

“When I went out to do my first illegal paste up on the side of the gallery, basically, I thought I’d be fined at least, and nobody noticed me,” she said.

“I realised being invisible as an older woman was something I could use. It’s a bit of a laugh, but we have to take that seriously and counter it.

“This show in Ballarat is a great re-entry point for me to show a full body of work in a well-utilised space.”

Wood’s paste up street art has been an annual fixture at Melbourne’s Hosier Lane in acknowledgement of International Women’s Day for about eight years, through which she met Celebrate Ageing founder and director Dr Catherine Barrett.

The pair will discuss the overarching themes of Wood’s work prevalent for more than a decade.

“The talk will be about how there’s a lot of stereotypes around older women who are made to feel invisible or like crones, all those lazy stereotypes,” she said.

“My work, both with my street art is directly activist, while my work in the show, while more personal, still endeavours to represent older women in a non-idealised, non-diminished, non-caricatured way.”

Into the Maw will be on show from Saturday 19 October to Sunday 8 December.

Wood’s artist talk will be held on Friday 25 October from 10am to 12pm. Visit bit.ly/4eLRbUF for tickets.