Women hold up half the sky!

In Australia during the 1970s screenprinting emerged as a powerful political art form, and in Adelaide Ann Newmarch was the leading exponent. She adopted this accessible medium to explore political, social and feminist issues, based on her own experiences as a woman and mother, adhering to the philosophy ‘the personal is political’.

Newmarch’s best-known image, Women hold up half the sky!, was part of a series of works celebrating the achievements of her Aunt Peggy. During the 1940s and 1950s, Peggy, a remarkable woman, worked at two jobs to raise her eight children single-handedly while also building a home for them, undertaking much of the plumbing, electrical and maintenance work herself. With the addition of Mao Zedong’s famous quote, Newmarch has transformed the small and tattered photograph of Peggy, who is holding her husband in response to a dare at a summer party, into an important image for all women, in the process imparting an optimism that everything is possible.

Julie Robinson, Senior Curator Prints, Drawings and Photographs