September 3, 2022 - 3:00 pm to 5:00 pmBig Beautiful Female Theory: an exhibition

This exhibition is to celebrate the launch of Grills’ anarchic illustrated memoir, big beautiful female theory, at Radius Gallery in Hepburn from 3rd September to 15th October, 2022. The show opens on September 3rd, 3-5pm with a special, surprise perfromance.

The exhibition explores notions of femininity, the abject, inheritance, the body and diet culture, and the domestic, through watercolour and gouache, oil paintings, found objects, collage, and more. Through deeply personal works, Hassall, Grills and Gorring examine what femininity means to them, in an increasingly fragmented, unknowable world. The exhibition will launch on September 3rd from 3–5pm with a special guest performance at Radius Gallery, 76 Main Road, Hepburn and will continue until the 15th of October.

This exhibition will include artworks from Eloise Grills’ recent illustrated memoir big beautiful female theory, released by Affirm Press in June 2022. The book has been named one of the ABC’s Best Books of June, and been reviewed positively by the Age, Meanjin, ArtsHub, and the Bendigo Advertiser. Windham Campbell-winning author Maria Tumarkin described the book as ‘impossibly brilliant’, and Stella Prize-longlisted author Ellena Savage called it a ‘blazing, fearless manifesto’. Part feminist rallying cry, part comic book, big beautiful female theory is a carnivalesque exploration of the ways identity is formed through culture, relationships and the weight of society’s expectations. The book encompasses more than 150 pages of illustrations, and many of these artworks will be on display at this exhibition in Radius.

Exhibiting with Grills are Jackie Gorring and Nina Hassall. Jackie Gorring’s work for the show includes sculpture made from found, recycled, stitched, wood and metal constructions, floor or wall rugs featuring tapestry, knitted fabric, sheep fleece, fabric-stencilled recycled cardboard wall pieces, and stencilled nylon scour pads. Nina Hassall’s artworks explore how intrinsically linked we are to our surroundings, the people in our lives and how this feeds back into our own sense of self, memory, and perception. By using cropping and collage with personal and family photographs, and varied media of oil paint, pastel, watercolour, and charcoal, she attempts to paint humans, feelings, temperature, moments in time that are familiar, sometimes intimate, sometimes claustrophobic, and often ambiguous.

More details on Radius Gallery's website