Curator Lee Kinsella is deeply familiar with the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art at the University of Western Australia (UWA). As the holder of this collection, most of the exhibitions at UWA’s Lawrence Wilson Gallery have found their anchor points in this eclectic assemblage of works. Place Makers also draws from it, but for Kinsella, the opportunity to situate these works—by Gladys Milroy, Margaret Morgan, Fiona Foley and the late Edith Trethowan—in conversation with each other, and with their more contemporary works, invited an important reframing of them as remarkable creatives who just happen to be female.

Trethowan’s 1920s revivalist woodblock prints capture both a burgeoning Perth and Fremantle, as well as the minutiae of domestic life. Nonagenarian Milroy’s drawings are evocative and reverential narrative illustrations of Country,
informed by her experiences as a member of the Stolen Generation.

Works by Foley include her HHH (Hedonistic Honky Haters) series (2004) as well as new works made while in residence at the UWA School of Design, informed by the research of Dr Liz Conor detailing the derogatory language used to describe Aboriginal women.

Morgan’s works, including prints and etchings, speak to a different kind of generational trauma, growing up with a single mother on social security, and also her experiences squatting and being among the queer community
of Sydney in the 1980s.

For Kinsella, Place Makers clarifies how distinctive each artist’s voice is, as well as how particular their communication is to their own communities. “I’m struck by the power of each of these artists to be so concise and so sophisticated.”

“These are really pushy objects. They’re distinctive and they demand space; they demand engagement. There’s an ongoing dialogue between these objects, as between people… These works have an ongoing legacy.”

Place Makers
Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery
27 September—6 December

This article was published in the September/October 2025 print edition of Art Guide Australia.