Joy Hester Happy Belated Birthday: The year we closed our doors

Joy Hester Happy Belated Birthday: The year we closed our doors

What: Joy Hester: Remember Me – curated by Kendrah Morgan

Where: Heide MoMA Melbourne

When: 30 June 2020 – 4 October 2020 (new end date yet to be announced).

Temporarily closed due to COVID19 Melbourne stage four lock down

Forward note: The Curators:

I feel like calling them “the curettes” as it is with surgical precision they have researched and dissected Joy Hester’s artwork, placing her alongside her male contemporaries. One day Joy Hester will gain international status like Nolan or Whiteley. Not today our doors are closed.

2020: Kendrah Morgan: Joy Hester Remember Me: exhibition Heide MoMA

2005: Denise Mimmoccchi: ‘In Defence of the Unwritten History”: Article: Woman’s Art Journal, Fall 2004/Winter 2005, Volume 25, No.2, published by Woman’s Art Inc. (USA)

2001: Kelly Gellatly: Leave no space for yearning – The Art of Joy Hester: exhibition Heide MoMA

2001: Deborah Hart: Joy Hester and Friends: exhibition National Gallery of Australia

1983: Janine Burke: Joy Hester:  Greenhouse Publications, Melbourne

The Review: Happy Belated Birthday

The 21th of August was my birth mother’s hundredth birthday, Joy Hester. Joy died at forty, I was six, I am now sixty-five and my son is forty-two.  I have never celebrated her birthday, I rarely speak of her, shy away from the curious, hide my mother inside of me.

Kendrah Morgan, the curator of Joy Hester: Remember Me, generously took me on a private tour of the largest exhibition to date of her artwork; the day before the first COVID19 lockdown in Victoria.

The glaring light in the car park closest to the Albert Tucker wing, where the exhibition is held (irony), contrasts with the subdued tones of the exhibition walls painted smoky grey highlighted with musty pink and soft blue, the lights are set low not to burn pigment and crackle the fragile papers, the precious creations. This gave a feeling of walking inside my mother. A womb. It was an overwhelming feeling of deep acknowledgement, sadness, relief, and joy to externally feel her heartbeat, her soul. I thank Kendrah for giving me that experience.

Joy Hester’s work is deeply analytical. This is achieved through exploring the female form, leaving you with a question mark on gender. The works are executed deliberately, swiftly, and deftly with inks and water colour. There is an emotional urgency/agency as if to catch the water before it hits the floor. To express your work in this way takes practice, skill, and persistence. This is evident in her depiction of lovers, from 1948 and continuing until 1956—it was a body of work she continuously went back to, as if wresting with a query that is hard to catch. A woman’s place in love, in relationships. Most of the works bar a few place women central to the theme, in the foreground, front and centre. There is one work, of two women interestingly, in equal position in the foreground: cat. no.109 Love (Heart group) c.1949.

I propose Joy Hester’s work is a precursor to feminist art. In Hester’s work ‘woman’ is the investigated, the protagonist. She visually questions the gender divide, plays with status, moves and changes the status. An early rendering of this is in a c.1942 Street Scene: cat. no. 17. The work is possibly set in St. Kilda, where she lived with Albert Tucker. It is a black ink wash. You cannot miss the billboard in the foreground with a naked woman except for the lacy underwear. We automatically think place, time, and work, most likely a prostitute. But is it? We know that type of advertising would not have been allowed then, through the strict censorship laws in place. Does it indicate ‘women’s role’? How women are perceived? What is their station in life? Is it challenging stereotypes? What are our views on prostitution or scantily clad women be it then or now? The woman has a smile on her face. Street Scene, a simple yet complex work. Women are not ‘objects’ in Joy’s work they are the central tenant. It is a work worthy of exploration and further investigation.

The works in the exhibition are in a scholarly way grouped together to make it easy for the viewer to digest the art, question the art, see the creative process. There is a cluster of works titled “Interiors with figures”.  Kendrah states “… with the figures projecting a sense of vulnerability, internal disquiet and sometimes claustrophobia…” There are three works [cat. no. 21 (Seated woman) 1943, cat. no. 22 Woman Resting 1943, cat. no.31 (Seated girl) c.1944] of women in bare rooms or bedrooms, alone and empty and quite well dressed. There is a sense of women waiting. What are they waiting for? … loved ones to come back from war? Waiting for life to begin?  Resting? Are they waiting for death?

In that grouping there is a magnificent work, (Three figures in a chair), c.1944 cat. no. 32, which appears to be a naked family all sitting in one chair and the background is black, dense. None of them appear to be happy yet they are comfortable. The year before Sweeney was born (her first child), the year before war ended. Was Hester pregnant? Was she questioning place and position? Are they trapped? Is it questioning the family construct? It is not an easy work.

Kendrah Morgan frequently pointed out how Joy’s work kept going back to the senses being integrated into her visual story. Joy hardly ever painted noses as there was no need—it didn’t add to the narrative, sight, the eyes, were the main sense strongly conveyed, however there are standouts to this such as Girl Holding Flowers 1956, cat.no.125: you can almost smell the posy. The languid lazy arm hanging heavy over a shoulder, giving weight to the touch explored in (The embrace) from the Love series I cat. no.110,c.1949.

My mother was not a commercial artist, she was a woman artist standing often alone with her male contemporaries, she never backed down. Hester’s work was not valued until forty years after her death, the exhibitions twenty years apart. Women flock to the exhibitions drinking in their language. She is a feminist 101 charging well before the others, alone. I hope lockdown is lifted to enable you to stand before this valuable work that gets shown so rarely and is still open to questioning.     

Post note:

Many flourishings go to the women curators who bastion women artists. It is their time and commitment that places women alongside men in art. It is interesting to note there are more women artists than their male counter parts, however there are still fewer represented in national and state Museums and Galleries.

Fern Smith 24/08/2020

Links: to Heide MoMA https://www.heide.com.au/exhibitions/joy-hester-remember-me and Scroll down the page to download the Room Sheet – the catalogue of Joy Hester Remember Me

PST: Collage by Fern – most of the images are held at Smith-Hester archive Heide MOMA

2 Replies to “Joy Hester Happy Belated Birthday: The year we closed our doors”

  1. So insightful Fern, your observations are that of her daughter and very moving also written as a professional art critic , Happy Birthday Joy Hester.

  2. Beautiful. A way of seeing that I, a male, cannot see, it is beyond my innate ability to relate to those messages, that you have tapped into. I ‘know’ those messages are there, academically but not in reality.

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