Happily Ever After: alternative destinies in contemporary feminine narrative
exhibition opening midday Saturday 11th JuneAn exhibition of artists’ books at the John Paynter Gallery, Friday 10th – Sunday 26th June 2011, and the Cox Rayner Gallery, Artspace Mackay, Friday 29th July- Friday 28th October 2011, curated by Caelli Jo Booker and Helen Hopcroft.
The exhibition is conceived as an interdisciplinary collaboration between artists, writers and craftspeople invited to work together to create handmade books which explore female narratives within the fairytale genre.
While the classic fairytale ending ‘happily ever after’ envisages a single, finite destiny, the contemporary feminine experience encompasses a multiplicity of roles, expectations, endings, beginnings and relationships. Thus the exhibition theme is probably best conceptualised as a celebration of diversity within destiny, with the fairytale genre used as the narrative vehicle to explore this idea.
