Painting a portrait of history’s lost women

ARTIST Deborah Klein will share six years’ worth of work as part of the latest exhibition at The Old Butchers Shop Gallery.

Launching tomorrow and running until Sunday 26 May, the show is called Unsolved Histories which Klein said is a continuation on a favoured theme of hers.

“The title is a play on words taking the expression ‘unsolved histories’ as a starting point where all the works are based on women who have fallen through the cracks of history,” she said.

“They’re identities we’ll never know. I lived in London for over seven years in the 70s when the second wave of feminism was really underway so I’ve always been interested in that theme of forgotten women.

“When I did my masters in Melbourne in the mid to late 90s, I became more interested in the pattern and decoration movement where women artists were exploring women’s contribution to the domestic realm so that plays into it too.”

Depicting the backs of women’s heads with attention given to lace work and hairweaving implements, the majority of pieces are acrylic on oval canvas and linen surfaces, with other mediums ranging from water pastel, ink drawings, and linocut works.

Listed as part of the Ballarat Heritage Festival program, Klein said some of the works in Unsolved Histories are a nice callback to her own local connection.

“My father was born in Creswick and my auntie Eileen was born in Ballarat,” she said. “I’ve actually used some of the doilies she made and others I’ve inherited as the basis for some of the images.

“There’s a very personal connection for me.”

Klein said the show also marks a transitionary period for her.

“It’s a watershed because the work is very much starting to change and evolve and go in a different direction,” she said.

“I’m painting faces again and some of those images will be projected and animated in the coming White Night festival. It’s nice to mark this body of work before moving onto the next.”