In the 1980 and 1990s in Melbourne there was a resurgence of interest in women artists with the publication of key texts by Juliette Peers and Victoria Hammond (Completing the Picture: women artists and the Heidelberg era 1992) and Janine Burke (Australian Women Artists 1840-1940, 1980). Having just returned from a year in Europe in 1992 into the dark days of an Australian recession, I was lucky to secure a job as the manager of a commercial art gallery called Melbourne Fine Art Gallery, once known as the Melbourne Art Exchange. The director decided that it was timely to curate a selling exhibition dedicated to Australian women artists and that was the start of my abiding interest in their largely forgotten lives and work.

Under significant time constraints I edited and largely wrote this little fully illustrated catalogue to the show.  While it is not my finest written work, it is full of surprising gems by artists we rarely see such as Portia Geach’s view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Alice Danciger’s de Chirico-like Figures in a surrealist landscape. There were also some nineteenth century treasures from Emma Minnie Boyd, Clara Southern and Sophie Steffanoni.