Women are true gems at exhibition
- From: The Courier-Mail
- September 30, 2011
SPARKLING LINKS: Eliza Tee (left) and Elizabeth Shaw who have both designed brooches honouring relatives. Picture: Campbell Scott. Source: The Courier-Mail
BRISBANE jeweller Eliza Tee had a unique advantage when designing a brooch representing one of the 100 high-achieving Australian women selected for Brisbane's Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor exhibition.
Tee had not only met pioneering Queensland aviator Nancy-Bird Walton but she was a relative. Walton, who died in 2009, was Tee's great-aunt.Eleven years ago Papua New Guinean-born Tee and her mother, who was often looked after by Walton as a school boarder in Sydney, caught up with the famous aviator at Archerfield airport.
"She was very inspiring to talk to. I could see her strength of character and she had a great sense of humour," Tee says. "We had a casual chat with her. I feel really privileged to have gained that insight and knowledge of what she was like."
To reflect the life of Australia's first woman to earn a commercial pilot's licence, tutored by Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, the award-winning Tee chose black feathers (flight), crystals (sky and family), pearl-shell buttons (women's resourcefulness) and a replica of Walton's first aeroplane, a De Havilland Gypsy Moth.
Curator Kirsten Fitzpatrick says the gallery was inspired to create the exhibition following a speech by Queensland Governor Penelope Wensley calling for events to recognise the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day in 2011.
Fitzpatrick started planning in March last year and one of the first people she approached was Queensland Art College jewellery lecturer Elizabeth Shaw who had a special request. She wanted to create a brooch representing her great-great aunt Sister Elizabeth Kenny, a physiotherapy pioneer in the treatment of polio.
It took Shaw a month of working on-and-off to complete her brooch which bears the word Sister, which Kenny controversially called herself despite having completed no medical study even though she served on 12 military ship tours of duty and earned the title.
The award-winning Shaw, who drew on her mother's memory of Kenny, also included a posy of Queensland's state flower, the Cooktown Orchid.
Fitzpatrick decided a brooch was an ideal form for jewellers to tell a story while there was also a connotation of great women being acknowledged by a medal-like object.
She thought of the Tinker Tailor rhyme - which has medieval origins and is about two centuries old - because it lists the professions of a woman's suitors.
Now women are taking up the traditionally male careers themselves including tailor (fashion designer Prue Acton), soldier (Queensland's Air Vice-Marshall Julie Hammer), sailor (Kay Cottee), medicine (plastic surgeon Dr Fiona Wood) and science (Olympic gold medallist and nuclear physicist Shirley Strickland).
Other famous women represented include Australian Governor-General Quentin Bryce, Australian PM Julia Gillard, chef Kylie Kwong, Princess Mary of Denmark, tennis great Margaret Court, soprano Dame Joan Sutherland, author Miles Franklin and philanthropist Caroline Chisholm.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor: 100 Women 100 Brooches 100 Stories runs until November 12 at Artisan Gallery, 381 Brunswick St, Fortitude Valley, before touring Australia.
INFO: www.artisan.org.au or 3215 0800
