MCA art exhibition by Julie Rrap challenges perceptions of the female body

A major figure in Australian contemporary art, Professor Julie Rrap is the co-director of  Sydney College of the Arts, and has been working in the mediums of photography, painting, sculpture, performance and video since the 1970s.

Professor Rrap’s new exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Julie Rrap: Past Continuous is a major research output that extends her ongoing interest in the representational histories of the female body in both western art and popular culture – a preoccupation prompted by the invisibility of women artists when she began her career. 

“When I went to art school and studied painting 40 or so years ago, I just kept opening history books, and there were so many images of women,” Professor Rrap said. “But then I couldn’t really find a lot of women artists. As a young woman artist, that was a really impactful moment.”

The lack of acknowledgement of women artists along with the limited view of how women’s bodies were repeatedly represented was something Professor Rrap felt compelled to address in her works, her research and her teaching practice at Sydney College of the Arts. 

“There are so many women artists in history who were quite radical for their time in how they saw and depicted things, yet they were sidelined for being women,” she said. “Women are half the population. Women make art in different ways and perceive the world, including their bodies, in different ways. Why would you exclude that from the conversation?”

Held in the MCA collection, Professor Rrap’s landmark 1982 installation Disclosures: A Photographic Construct now appears 42 years later alongside new works from Past Continuous. The artist uses her own body as subject in the exhibition, which has been an ongoing practice in her work.

“When I first got a camera, I took some photos of myself and I thought they would express something, but it was just a photo of me,” she said. “I didn’t find anything out. I realised that was the limitation of photography and our expectation of what it can reveal. 

“What I did notice was that you can’t see what I was looking at, so I started to shoot two cameras and two perspectives, as a sort of ‘photo doublespeak’, a mirroring of front and back.”

Disclosures features more than 70 photographs and self-portraits of the artist suspended in opposing rows.  

“The fact that I am both the artist and the subject gives me agency and permission – it’s a very simple way of saying that women have been more often the subject or object of the camera’s eye. When you take that person who’s normally looked at, and make them the one who looks at, then the two positions are conflated.”

In the exhibition, Professor Rrap challenges traditional ideas of beauty as she reflects on how her own body changes through different stages of life.

“The human body has been used in art since the beginning of time,” she said. “My intervention is to play around and challenge fixed ideas and conventions about imaging the body, and to renegotiate how we might look at the female body, particularly the older female body. 

“When I first made Disclosures, I was 30-something years old. In art and in popular media, you always see a certain type of female body, usually young. The older female body isn’t very visible in our culture. I suddenly thought it would be interesting if I were to return to using myself now that I’m in my 70s.

“Disclosures explores the excessive use of young female bodies in art, whereas Past Continuous focuses on the virtually invisible ageing body. My new exhibition is about uniting these two bodies together in the same time frame. I’m hoping it will make people reflect on that difference – the excessive versus the invisible body – and why that is.”

As co-director of Sydney College of the Arts, revising the erasure of women artists in art history is crucial for art education and instruction, Professor Rrap said.

“Art is an expression of our human perception of the world – women have freshened up this history in a way and brought a whole other kind of sensibility to culture. Thankfully, young women artists coming into art school now have a framework in which to think about these concepts, supported by a proliferation of critical writings and greater visibility of women artists’ practice. 

“If you’re a visual artist, to read things, to have context for the way you might be feeling and thinking, and to feel support from other women artists makes a huge difference,” she said. “It’s about seeing what you could be.”

Industry experience and practice-based learning are key pillars of education at Sydney College of the Arts, providing students with the skillset and opportunity to pursue many different avenues after graduating.

“Sydney College of the Arts is very practice-based,” Professor Rrap said. “We’re conscious our academics are active artists, and we have a close connection to cultural institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art. It’s an important relationship between artists, the art world and art schools. Many of our students have become professional artists, many of them have gone into curating, or are working in galleries. 

“Some of our most famous Australian artists have studied at Sydney College of the Arts and have taught here. That creates a strong reputation for SCA and is meaningful for students who study with us – they become part of an exciting and creative environment in which they learn from well-known artists who came before them."

Visit Julie Rrap: Past Continuous at the Museum of Contemporary Art until 16 February 2025.

Hero image: Julie Rrap featuring Disclosures: A Photographic Construct, 1982, installation view, image courtesy of the artist and MCA. Photo: Zan Wimberley.