Women making art and history … here’s a book and some other creations I celebrated in April (on the heels of Sydney’s Art month and Women’s History month in March).

Sally Morgan flies

Little Bird’s Day by Sally Morgan and illustrated by Yolgnu man Johnny Warrkatja Malibirr was launched in April. It’s the simple but profound story of a day in the life of Little Bird who sings the world alive, nestles with Moon, and dreams of flying with the stars. Pre-primary and lower primary children will love it. Sally Morgan (My Place), is one of Australia’s best-known Aboriginal artists and writers. She belongs to the Palku and Nyamal peoples of the Pilbara.

Varga distils lives

Sydney-born artist Justine Varga recently won the $30,000 Dobell Drawing Prize for 2019 with Photogenic drawing (2018) – a piece that blurs the boundaries between drawing and photography. Award judge Ben Quilty said Varga’s winning work ‘is a distillation of so many components of our collective lives. Drawing plays a pivotal role in this artist’s exploration of us all.’ The work was at the National Art School Gallery until May 25, 2019.

Eco-warrior heroine

Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir is a famous actor in Iceland – but her stellar performance as an eco-activist in Woman at War (2018) should mean we see more of her. Geirharðsdóttir plays Halla, a middle-aged choir leader who is sabotaging electricity pylons to bring down the heavy industry that’s threatening Iceland’s natural beauty. She also plays Asa, her twin sister. Just as Halla’s application to adopt a child is approved her ‘war’ gets trickier. Surreal in parts but touching and challenging.

She’s so composed

ABC Classic says Women of Note: A Century of Australian Composers is a ‘fascinating journey through the history of Australian composition, highlighting just how much of that history has been written by women’. Enjoy Elena Kats-Chernin’s playful ‘Russian Rag’,  Miriam Hyde’s first piano concerto from 1934 (“Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat minor’), Indigenous composer Brenda Gifford’s ‘Banju’ from 2017 and other riches that show how classical music is developing in the 21st century.

Quadruped, Bird, Fish

Composer and flautist Christine Draeger’s premiere performance of ‘Three Dances’ was a highlight of the Bourbaki Ensemble concert in St Stephen’s Newtown on April 14. The unique program featured women composers – Maria Grenfell, Jessie Montgomery, Kate Whitley and Julia Wolfe – a great line up. Draeger (pictured) says she wrote the concerto last year using ‘the idea of three animals (Quadruped, Bird and Fish) that came from three kinds of rhythmic energy: walking, flying and swimming.’

Women at the Wheel was first published in the South Sydney Herald, April 2019.