TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SAILOR… 100 Years, 100 Women, 100 Stories, 100 Brooches

Kirsten Fitzpatrick has curated an exhibition TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SAILOR… 100 Years, 100 Women, 100 Stories, 100 Brooches – for  Artisan, Brisbane.  The show will be at Artisan from 29.09.11  - 12.11.11 and then it will tour nationally.

The exhibition will feature '100 stories of great Australian women who have broken the barriers in arts, sciences, humanities and sports and 100 brooches made in response to these stories by 100 of Australia's most talented women jewellers, this exhibition celebrates the centenary of International Women's Day.'

I was lucky enough to be one of the artists invited to be involved.  I was provided with a short biography and asked to create a brooch in response.  I was also lucky to be matched up with Sister Elizabeth Kenny.  An extraordinary lady who without formal medical training revolutionised the treatment for Polio.  This was at a time when there was no cure for Polio and when women weren't valued in medical roles other than nursing and certainly not as inventors of treatments.  Sister Elizabeth Kenny was my Great Great Aunt (my Grandmother's Aunt).  My mother while very young met Sister Kenny and I grew up with stories from my mother and my grandmother about Sister Kenny.

Sister Elizabeth Kenny was inspired and outspoken at a time when these were not attributes encouraged or admired in a woman.  She led a very public life and as result her achievements and criticisms have been fairly well documented. She had many detractors including a Royal Commission of Queensland Doctors, but was not deterred from continuing to practice her revolutionary treatment of Polio Victims. I understand she had a strong personality and was an imposing and sometimes fierce woman, but always attentive and tender to patients. I made the brooch as one for her to wear, large as she was a bold woman, shaped to suggest a medal in form, proudly stating her title and including a feminine posy of the Queensland State flower, the Cook Town Orchid. While she did live to receive recognition for what she achieved in her life, most was from overseas, primarily America, not Queensland where much of her work was done.

                                    Photography by Rod Buchholz

Sister Kenny wore a lot of black and I chose silver with pierced out sections to contrast with this.