Puncturing the Mask of Civility

‘Puncturing
the Mask of Civility’, curated by Dr Llewellyn Negrin and featuring the work of
eleven Tasmanian women artists will open at Runnymede in December. The
exhibition takes its cue from 18th and 19th century
manuals and advice books on women’s conduct and commentary by authors such as
Jane Austen and how the lives of Runnymede’s dynamic women may be measured
against these strictures. According to Negrin,  

We get glimpses of the
tenuousness of this polite façade from some of the women who lived at
Runnymede.  For instance, Dorothea Pitcairn was involved in her husband’s
campaign to end the transportation of convicts to Van Diemen’s Land and one of
her daughters, Eliza, was described as spirited and ‘as strong-willed as her
father’. Anna Maria Nixon, while often judgemental of the convicts in Van
Diemen’s Land, expressed sympathy for her cook who had been an ex-convict. She
also bemoaned the lack of provision for girls’ education in the colony and
sought to find funds for the establishment of a school for girls.  There
is also an account of Eliza Bayley, wife of the sea captain Charles Bayley,
accompanying him on one of his voyages on a whaling ship while her
sister-in-law Emma Bayley even gave birth on a whaling ship!

It is these cracks in the mask of
civility which the artists in this exhibition seek to bring to light. Just as
the flaws in the decorative friezes, wallpapers and floor coverings in
Runnymede reveal the fragility of the veneer of civilisation which it seeks to
present, so the works in this exhibition prise open the fissures to disclose
what lies beneath.

The
exhibition features the work of Ruth Frost, Denise Rathbone, Linda Erceg, Jan
Dineen, Chantale Delrue, Frances Watson, Jane Slade, Christal Berg, Janelle
Mendham, Morag Porteous and Janine Combes with musical
contributions by Anne Marshall, Christine Akerman and Llewellyn Negrin.