© Sarah McEwan, 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the author. Design: Rachel Viski Photograph: Jackie Cooper Thank you: Vic McEwan, Holly McEwan, Julie Montgarrett, Stephen Payne, Caroline Geraghty, Drew Halyday, Jeremy Kruckel, Caitlin Overton, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, the Cad Factory, Charles Sturt University, Women’s Centre for Creative Work, Littlewood Sign Solutions, RK Frasers Hardware, Chambers Whyte Design and Print. An extra special thank you to: Sarah, Sarah, Megan, Elvis, Matt, Julia, Kirsten, Vicki, Sue, Leanne, Sam, Wendy, Ro, Lindee, Melinda, Christine, Cindy, Penny, Kelly, Michelle, Tess, Sarah, Jessica, Alex, Kathryn, Susan, Kimberley, Brianne, Anaisabel, Natalie, Jason, Emilia, Adele, Neil and Allis. This exhibition has been supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW and their Regional Arts Fellowship. The Cad Factory and Wagga Wagga Art Gallery are supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
During a residency at the Women’s Centre for Creative Work (WCCW) in Los Angeles between 23 April – 4 May 2018, Sarah McEwan created a 10-minute survey for people to complete. It was promoted through the WCCW newsflash account for members and McEwan’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. The survey was open for two weeks, with most responses occurring within the first five days. In total 51 people answered the survey.
Minimalism arose with the advent of capitalist manufacture, as repetitive methods and ready-made materials absolved traditional aesthetic questions of expression and intention. Minimalism is often interpreted as dismantling subjectivity, championing the deliberate rejection of feeling and disrupting ties between the artist and her intentions or feelings. Thus minimalism, seems an unlikely vehicle for the investigation of subjectivity and feeling posed by Sarah McEwan.
Participants had to answer the following questions:
In Feelings from Bodies, fifty survey participants were asked to consider what ‘feminism’ means to them, the change it represents and the hopes and fears such change brings in a closely felt and deeply personal way. Their responses are now transposed into a staggering panorama of glyphic portraits, challenging how we perceive political subjectivity and encounter the feelings of others.
What do you think about feminism? What makes you feel afraid and why? What gives you hope and why? What words do you think are destructive and why? What words makes you think of change and why? As well as answering the five questions, there was an option to include age, identity, occupation, name, city/town and email address. From this information:
19 people remained anonymous and did not give their name
or email address
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people provided their name and email address. Every participant provided their age. The ages of people were: 25 – 34 years: participants 35 – 44 years: participants 45 – 54 years: participants 55 – 64 years: participants 65 and over: participant
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47 people gave an identity, with people giving multiple answers. 3 people did not respond. Identities included; Female/Woman/She/Her (39), Just Me (2), Queer (2), Mother (2), Person (2), Human (2), Cis woman, Bi-coastal,
Minimalism has been subject to a strict ‘essentialist’ gendering, discerning between conceptual, industrious ‘male’ practice and what is perceived as ‘female’ work: affective and often rendered by hand. On the contrary, art historian Susan Best argues that minimalist art prompts a unique reflection on feeling and affect whereby ‘the desire to withdraw or withhold feeling inadvertently underscores the question of feeling.’ 1 Minimalist works often locate the subjective dimension at the moment of reception rather than at point of production. This led Rosalind Krauss, in her seminal 1973 essay, to place minimalism within a phenomenological model of contemporary subjectivity that radically places the onus for ‘feeling’ on the viewer rather than the artist.
Wagga Wagga Art Gallery 9 February – 17 March 2019
33 people gave their location. 18 people did not respond. Australian locations included; Wagga Wagga (5), Narrandera (2), Leeton (2), Sydney (2), Melbourne (2), Lillian Rock (2), Sandigo, 2
Sarah has contributed artworks to over 30 exhibitions in the Riverina, Albury, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Townsville and New York, along with curating over 20 exhibitions from underground warehouses to regional galleries. Sarah is one of the 2017/18 Create NSW Regional Fellowship recipients, allowing her to undertake research at Duke University (USA), the Women’s Centre for Creative Work (USA), as well as a residency at Bundanon Trust to develop work for three exhibitions that extend her critique on the historical position of women over the last 3000 years.
An installation conversation and launch with Greg Conkey, Holly Conroy, Vicky Okot and Cheryl Penrith: 8 March, 7pm
Change Advocate, Social Worker, Expressive Therapist, Small Business Owner, Consultant, Self Employed, Costumier, Cleaner, Student, Volunteer, Health/Arts, Aged Care, Weaver, Activist, Psychotherapist, Arts Manager, Barista, Communications Manager, Gallery Assistant, Lawyer, Councilor, Lecturer/Researcher, Father, Bricoleur, Editor, Painter and Dreamer.
International locations included; Los Angeles ( ), Berlin, London and Salt Spring Island, Canada.
As an advocate for an inclusive art world, Sarah collaborated with Leanne Dyer and Riverina Community College to establish a supported studio in Wagga Wagga that has been running since 2016.
Feelings from Bodies brings together the voices of 50 survey participants who were asked what makes them feel hopeful, fearful, think of change, destruction and feminism. These intimate answers inform and create this artwork where feelings are transposed into a staggering panorama of glyphic portraits, challenging how we perceive political subjectivity and encounter the feelings of others. These portraits are at times curiously unsettling and wickedly playful.
49 people gave their occupation, with most people giving multiple occupations including; Artist (9), Mother (8), Teacher (3), Educator (3), Administrator (3), Dancer/Performer (2), Photographer (2), Community Development Manager (2), Wife (2), Writer (2), Musician (2), Graphic Designer (2), Lover (2), IT, Accountant, Renaissance Man, Curator, Parent,
Deniliquin, Forbes, Parkes, Mudgee, Barkers Vale, Glen Innes, Bulli, Petersham, St Peters, Blackheath, Chewton and Adelaide.
Sarah is the Creative Producer of the Cad Factory, an artist–led organisation creating an international program of new, immersive and experimental work guided by authentic exchange, ethical principles, people and place.
In Feelings from Bodies, McEwan challenges masculinist accounts of minimalism, gesturing to repetitive minimalist forms through careful and intimate brushstrokes. Floating icons recall and disrupt familiar figures and faces, resulting in portraits that are at times curiously unsettling and wickedly playful. Viewers are compelled to question the weight of their own feelings and experiences not limited by a need for strict meaning-making. With a keen feminist eye, McEwan poses a moving reflection on contemporary image culture and the objectification of bodies in art and the media.
However I Feel, Christian woman, I am a ripple on a pond, Australian, Proud Father, Aboriginal, Open working class creative female, Achiever and They.
Sarah McEwan
Sarah McEwan is a Birrego based artist working across painting, textile, installation, text, and video that plays with representation informed by the feminist and new materialist philosophy of how to make the present world different from the past.
1. Susan Best, Introduction, Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-Garde (Sydney: I.B. Tauris, 2011): 11.
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Feminism is my vessel, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 40cm x 200cm, 10cm x 20cm (5 panels) Disrupting the patriarchy/Making a new world, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 5cm x 140cm (4 panels) Awakening to other people’s experiences, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 40cm (2 panels) Everything I have been taught so far has been male, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm No rules and muscle men, 2019, acrylic on fabric, 40cm x 90cm Are we moving in the right direction?, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm Heaven will accept me, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm I am afraid walking by myself after dark, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm Still so far to go, 2019, acrylic on MDF with fabric, 40cm x 110cm Acceptance, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 40cm x 40cm What is my financial future?, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm Working together, not tearing each other down, 2019, acrylic on MDF with fabric, 85cm x 100cm Feminism is for women who can’t mix in the real world, 2018/19, acrylic on MDF, 20cm x 20cm New patterns of thought (I am not preserving the status quo), 2019, acrylic on MDF with fabric, 10cm x 140cm (3 panels), 10cm x 20cm (4 panels) Feminism scares and offends men (knowledge and power), 2019, acrylic on fabric, 40cm x 90cm More men need to take the reality of feminism seriously, 2019, acrylic on aluminum, 35cm x 82cm The future looks apocalyptic, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 100cm x 100cm The protected realms of male power throughout the world, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm Power hungry men who destroy the Earth and humanity for profit, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 50cm Patriarchy always tries to undermine feminism, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm Balance, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 40cm x 40cm Jacinda Ardern, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm There is space for multiple truths beyond the binary, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 40cm x 40cm (2 panels), 30cm x 30cm, 20cm x 20cm (4 panels) Embracing good men, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm For an older generation of males, the word feminism is destructive, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 90cm Immanence, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm
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Focus your eyes, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 40cm (2 panels) What kind of world will I leave for my daughter?, 2018, acrylic and gouache on MDF, 40cm x 40cm Striving, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm Nothing protects you from violence, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 60cm The future is radically open, queer, intersectional and inclusive, 2019, acrylic on MDF with fabric, 60cm x 160cm My kids reflecting critical and inclusive thinking, 2019, acrylic on aluminum, 60cm x 60cm The boundaries of where you can move, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 40cm x 40cm Connection and division, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 15cm x 40cm People, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 60cm Breathing and the void, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm Do men understand the lived experience of being female?, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 60cm If we stagnate we die, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 60cm Reinvent your world, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm Calling it out, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 60cm, 10cm x 20cm (5 panels) Recognising difference, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 60cm (2 panels) Counting for change, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm Will there be a day when the term feminism doesn’t need to be used?, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 120cm, 15cm x 15cm The non-human world is living, 2018, acrylic and ink on fabric, 60cm x 90cm Men working together to heal their pain, 2019, acrylic on fabric, 40cm x 90cm We’ve always done it this way, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 25cm x 140cm We are to entrenched to restructure, 2019, acrylic on MDF with fabric, 60cm x 103cm Trauma is a prison, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm Disassociation allows people to be cruel, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 30cm x 140cm (2 panels) Social media fueling the insanity, 2019, acrylic on MDF, 60cm x 140cm What if I die before I become the person I’m supposed to be?, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 40cm x 200cm
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