Bill Edwards Project

BACKGROUND: Elizabeth Grosz, Judith Butler and Michel Foucault have each written about the inadequacy of the gender binary to represent the diversity of genders that exist. Artists Catherine Opie, Cassils, Yasumasa Morimora and Robert Mapplethorpe have created works that enact what Butler calls “gender trouble”. By expanding my methodology of working with found images to recontextualise histories around queer identity/politics, I aimed to challenge binary notions of gender and the materiality of image-making. CONTRIBUTION: The Bill Edwards Project consists of a series of works based off an archival image of Edwards from c1907 and reproduced as a screenprint, poster prints and a hand-woven tapestry. Edwards was born Marion Edwards in 1874 in Murchison, Victoria and came to live as Bill in Melbourne around 1887. In 1905 he was accused of burglary and became a notorious escaped convict when his former identity was made public. The works celebrate Bill’s gender ambiguity and reclaim an important social/cultural history from the regional Victorian context, questioning the dominant construction of history and exemplifying how art can recuperate forgotten/obscured histories. The reproduction of photographic imagery as tapestry creates a material transformation that reveals new knowledge in this medium. Just as Butler maintains that identity unfolds over time, the portrait is constructed over time (i.e. in tapestry), rather than captured in an instant, becoming an event/encounter more than an image (Ariana Azoulay). The ‘pixelated’ aesthetic of the tapestry further complicates the assignment of gender and questions the link between representation and identity. SIGNIFICANCE: This project began during a residency at the Australian Tapestry Workshop. The tapestry was selected among 28 finalists in the 2019 Incinerator Art Award – Art for Social Change out of over 300 entries. Poster print works in the series have been shown at Blindside, Melbourne and Exchange, Christchurch.