Welcome to the first iteration of our monthly book review series, where we share the latest curation of titles straight from the Art Guide Bookstore. With each instalment, we’ll celebrate what’s on offer in the world of Australian art book publishing.

“Creativity is never an individual competitive practice.” Jane O’Sullivan reviews CoUNTess: Spoiling Illusions Since 2008, the 2023 book exposing the data on gender inequity in the arts.

Elvis Richardson’s first anonymous blog post as the CoUNTess was born out of frustration. That was 2008 and since then, the Australian artist’s project has grown into a collaborative data benchmarking project that tracks women in the art world and the various ways they’re outnumbered by men. CoUNTess: Spoiling Illusions Since 2008, co-authored with writer Melinda Rackham, brings together over a decade of this research. “Repetition is the CoUNTess’s signature style,” they write in this major publication. “It is really stating the obvious. How many ways can it be said?” But this is not just a book about data. Reproducing original blog posts and artwork images, and also including a timeline and honest and vulnerable reflections from Richardson about her life and work, Spoiling Illusions is also a powerful testament to how the personal is always political.

Spoiling Illusions follows the timeline of an artist’s career. Beginning at art school, there are three women for every male visual arts graduate, but those numbers quickly shift in the realm of professional practice. The book looks at milestones of success; fellowships, media coverage and major exhibitions like the Venice Biennale. Of the 39 artists who represented Australia at Venice between 1954 and 2019, roughly two-thirds were men. But what’s really telling is the artists’ ages. Around 85% of the men were in their thirties or forties, but the majority of the women, 58%, were over 50 years old. Long term data on museum exhibitions and biennales shows the same pattern. The Countess Report, the benchmarking report conducted in 2016 and 2019, shows the largest group of exhibiting artists are in their forties, and this sample shows an average 15-year age gap between male and female artists.

“One of the sharpest moments in Spoiling Illusions comes when Rackham and Richardson are considering the pressure CoUNTess has put on institutions, and the consequent upswing in exhibition figures recorded in the 2019 Countess Report.”

The essays acknowledge the differing experiences of First Nations women in particular, and the questions raised here are critical. One of the sharpest moments in Spoiling Illusions comes when Rackham and Richardson are considering the pressure CoUNTess has put on institutions, and the consequent upswing in exhibition figures recorded in the 2019 Countess Report. “Large shows of women artists have actually moved the statistical speedometer for some institutions to appear to be more inclusive of both women and First Nations artists,” they write. “In reality, many are clumped into one show, allowing the institution to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, addressing gender equity and First Nations representation for that year’s programming.” If it needs to be said, this conversation about asymmetries in the art world is also about default assumptions around arts audiences.

The design of this major publication is striking. Findings are presented in simple charts, and there’s a genius bookmark with a coloured data key. The research takes on a cumulative weight, but ultimately, it’s Richardson’s raw personal reflections that make Spoiling Illusions such a galvanising read. In these short pieces of memoir, she talks about adoption, belonging, art and parenthood, and explores how her art practice and CoUNTess are interconnected. These sections also demonstrate the impossibility of separating structural pressures from ‘personal choice’. In one section on mid-career practice, Richardson writes movingly about how she’d begun to feel like a liability to her family, “literally and figuratively overinvested in an art career”. A later piece confronts, humorously but pointedly, the institutions that have been confused by her identity as both an artist and the public face of CoUNTess. Again, deeper questions emerge about who is most easily recognised as a ‘serious artist’, and why.

“Creativity is never an individual competitive practice; rather, it is the output of whole communities of artists of all origins, geographies, abilities and persuasions, who all deserve a living wage irrespective of their gender or race,” they argue. “Working together and working with vigilance is imperative.”

Spoiling Illusions is both a record and a roadmap, and there is definitely a challenge being laid down here for future generations. Rackham and Richardson write persuasively about the importance of owning data and creating polyvocal spaces. “Creativity is never an individual competitive practice; rather, it is the output of whole communities of artists of all origins, geographies, abilities and persuasions, who all deserve a living wage irrespective of their gender or race,” they argue. “Working together and working with vigilance is imperative.”

CoUNTess: Spoiling Illusions Since 2008 by Melinda Rackham and Elvis Richardson. Design by Elliott Bryce Foulkes and Maria Smit, published by Countess.Report.

Purchase a copy at the Art Guide Bookstore.

Editors note: Check out the latest iteration of the Countess Report, published in May 2024, for up-to-date statistical context. Co-edited by Miranda Samuels and Shevaun Wright, the latest report on gender representation in the Australian arts sector updates Countess’s earlier inquiries into the Australian contemporary art world.