_____a rather gross materialism________completed her relapse into irritability The Webbs’ Australian Diary 1898: cut and erased

Background: Theories of performativity posit that interior identifications of selfhood do not exist prior-to but are constituted in language (Butler 1990). Performative autobiographical practice presents a site for “tactical dis/identifications” (Smith 1995) of such identity effects, through working with “the discourses that have made us who we are” (Cappello 2013) rather than events that narrate a story of our lives. Such performative autobiographical practice can be situated within the interdisciplinary critical-creative field of autotheory (Fournier 2021) works of which regularly “exceed existing genre categories and disciplinary bounds”. Contribution: This solo exhibition at Linden New Art Project Space presented a suite of 28 posters in the gallery, extending to public billboard sites. In these works, Strahan’s autobiographical dis/identifications with discourses of class, gender and settler colonialism are articulated through the methods of poetic erasure (Cooney 2014, Reufle 2006) and feminist photomontage (Lavin, 1993). Photocopied pages of the historical text ‘The Webbs’ Australian Diary 1898’ are selectively erased, with photomontage of historical imagery also layered onto pages. New meanings are made from the original texts through gaps, juxtaposition and palimpsestic traces. The poster sites outside the gallery situate this discursive action beyond the individual, through engagements in public space. Significance: This solo exhibition was selected to be part of the annual program at Linden New Art by a curatorial panel. It was awarded funding by the City of Port Phillip from its Cultural Development Fund. The works were developed as part of Strahan’s studio residency at Linden New Art.