Jennifer Higgie: Weaving Their Way

Co-presented by Monash University Museum of Art | MUMA; Victorian College of the Arts, The University of Melbourne; and the Shelia Foundation.

The Kate Daw Memorial Lecture will be presented by Jennifer Higgie, renowned Australian, London-based writer, curator and former editor of frieze magazine. The lecture, titled ‘Weaving Their Way’, coincides with the exhibition Thin Skin, guest curated by Higgie at MUMA and featuring paintings by Australian and international artists who explore the liminal space between figuration and abstraction.

For Higgie, ‘traditional art history is at once a tale of extraordinary achievement and one of exclusions. Myriad esoteric beliefs have influenced the course of art over the past 150 years or so and, in particular, the drawings, paintings and sculptures made by women. For too long, such works were seen either as fascinating curios or sidelined or omitted from the story of modernism, despite the clear and documented reality of their existence.’ In her lecture, Higgie will explore the significance of these works today and discuss how they helped shape her curatorial decisions for Thin Skin.

Jennifer Higgie is an Australian writer who lives in London. The former editor of frieze magazine , she is the presenter of Bow Down, a podcast about women in art history; the author of The Mirror and the Palette: 500 Years of Women’s Self-Portraits and the novel Bedlam; the author and illustrator of the children’s book There’s Not One; and the editor of The Artist’s Joke. She also writes scripts. Her new book, The Other Side: Women, Art and the Spirit World, was published in February 2023. Her BBC Radio 3 five-part essay on the subject was broadcast in January 2022.

In 2015, Higgie curated the Hayward Gallery Touring and Arts Council Collection exhibition One Day, Something Happens: Pictures of People, which toured the United Kingdom from 2015 to 2017. She has been a judge of the John Moore’s Painting Prize, the Paul Hamlyn Award, the Turner Prize and the 2021 Freelands Painting Prize and a member of the advisory boards of Arts Council England, the British Council Venice Biennale Commission and the Contemporary Art Society. She is currently on the Imperial War Museum Art Commissions Committee. Higgie has a BA Fine Art (Painting) from the Canberra School of Art and an MA (Fine Art, Painting) from Victoria College of the Arts, Melbourne. Her paintings are in various public and private collections in Australia.

Thin Skin, guest curated by Jennifer Higgie, is open at Monash University Museum of Art I MUMA from 20 July to 23 September 2023.

^{Images: 1. Jennifer Higgie. 2. Jenny Watson, White Horse with Telescope 2012 (detail), courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne. Photo: courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne}

Acknowledgements