Trailblazing Women

Learn

Questions for looking, not for reciting dates.

Written for senior secondary students, tertiary groups, and anyone standing in front of the work. The aim is to look at the surface and at the history at the same time.

01

Look closely at the ridges and creases created by the tissue paper foundation beneath the watercolour. How does this physical texture challenge or alter the way we traditionally view official, polished political portraiture?

02

The women in this collection often stood completely opposite each other ideologically, yet they are united here by a shared institutional milestone. How does viewing them as a single, collective spectrum change your perspective on what it means to occupy a previously male-dominated space?

03

Select a portrait and observe how the single pigment settles into the surface. How does the artist use the natural separation and variation of a single paint to convey the personal grit required to hold space under public scrutiny?

A second way of looking

Match the trailblazer to the milestone

Each portrait captures a woman who broke a definitive institutional first. The hanging order in the room follows pigment, not chronology. This list is here if you want to reconnect name, achievement and colour.

Milestone

  • First Female Foreign Minister
  • First woman to lead an established federal parliamentary party into a federal election campaign
  • First Female Speaker of the House of Representatives
  • First Female Cabinet Minister with a Major Portfolio
  • First Openly Gay Woman Elected to Federal Parliament
  • First Female Governor-General of Australia
  • First Female Premier of an Australian State
  • First Female Deputy Leader of a Major Political Party
  • First Woman to Co-Found and Lead Her Own Political Party into Parliament
  • First Female ADF Veteran Elected to Federal Parliament
  • First Indigenous Female Senator
  • First Female Prime Minister
  • Longest-Serving Female Senator
  • First Female Leader of an Australian Political Party
  • Longest-Serving Female Member of the Australian Parliament
  • First Female Asian-Australian Elected to Federal Parliament
  • First Indigenous Woman Elected to Federal Parliament

Trailblazer

  • Bronwyn Bishop
  • Carmen Lawrence
  • Dame Margaret Guilfoyle
  • Jacqui Lambie
  • Janine Haines
  • Joan Child
  • Julia Gillard
  • Julie Bishop
  • Marise Payne
  • Natasha Stott Despoja
  • Nova Peris
  • Pauline Hanson
  • Penny Wong
  • Quentin Bryce