CoUNTess : spoiling Illusions since 2008 / Melinda Rackham, Elvis Richardson

This is a book about data - data which exposes the inequity of gender representation in the Australian visual arts sector - charting the history and impact of the CoUNTess blog and Countess.Report, which through counting, compiling, analyzing and publishing gender representation data has instigated significant institutional revision. It is also a book about the lives of women artists, writers, curators and academics navigating an asymmetrical art world, where the odds are statistically weighted against them. For every male visual arts graduate in Australia there are three women, yet in the professional arts arena of exhibitions, commissions, acquisitions, reviews, monographs, retrospectives and market value, men regularly outnumber women. It speaks to art, cultural, educational and feminist historical contexts, both in Australia and globally, providing both specific and broad examples in the visual arts and creative cultures. Accessible and fully referenced, Spoiling Illusions since 2008 establishes and unpacks the theoretical territory in which CoUNTess operates. Artwork by 40 contemporary Australian (cis and trans) women and gender non-binary artists and collaborators illustrate the richness and diversity of often underseen art practices. Over several generations countless number of women's collectives and projects have redressed the imbalance with a sense of humour, re-writing herstory, destabilising presumption and remaking myth. Yet our examination reveals that knowledge is still primarily framed through masculine perspectives. It's clear that to sustain change women must control the narrative. Equity in gender representation has never been the goal of the CoUNTess project, rather it is to dump the ideology of?male genius and celebrate our collective and community ecosystems of art and knowledge making to instigate systemic change.