Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: 'Ordinary Escapes and Other Magic' explicated the work of two young South Australian feminists who explore popular cultural imagery of women via louche, hand-fabricated, hobbyist, child art techniques and materials. They execute highly accomplished moving image and digital works referencing the familiar tropes and canons of popular cinema and longstanding repertoires of symbolic representation of women in the "Western Tradition" since the Enlightenment. Peers' catalogue essay, 'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered' contemplates woman as unstable, mad, uncanny and alien within mainstream culture, and unites the two artists. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: Peers' essay explores 3 subthemes: (1) the symbolism of the moon and periodicy in relation to women; (2) woman as insane, hysterical outsider and; (3) the ongoing definition of women's art as second rate within modernist mythologies of genius. Writing and artworks controversially refuse the stereotype of radical art battling convention in preference to celebrating the middle class and trivial, jamming modernist preoccupations. Such a position is still relatively rare in Australia, but resonates with and documents a rapid global upswing of revisiting both 1970s feminist interventions but also hitherto derided cultures of middle class consumption, and female celebration of such capitalist and paradigm driven values. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: Peers was appointed to SASA Gallery's External Scholar Program, which comissions academics, curators and writers to engage with it through written and spoken commentaries that extend their research impact and depth beyond the visual. SASA Gallery is a leading contemporary art space and active site for learning and teaching in an international context, supported by the Division of Education, Art and Social Sciences. This exhibition is assisted by the South Australian Government through Carclew Youth Arts Board, and curated by artists Celeste Aldahn and Ray Harris.