Barbara Hanrahan

Barbara Janice Hanrahan (6 September 1939 – 1 December 1991) was an Australian artist, printmaker and writer whose work featured relationships, women, women's issues and feminist ideology. Hanrahan was also known for her writings and short stories featuring coming of age stories that were somewhat biographical.

Early life

Barbara Hanrahan was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1939. After her father's death at the age of 26 from tuberculosis in 1940, when Hanrahan was just a year old, she lived with her mother (a commercial artist), her grandmother, and her great-aunt (who had Down syndrome). This matriarchal household is often correctly thought of as the inspiration for much of Hanrahan's art, as well as the suburb she was raised in, the inner-western Adelaide suburb of Thebarton. Her mother later remarried.

Hanrahan attended Thebarton Primary School and Thebarton Technical School. Hanrahan went on to study a diploma in art teaching from Adelaide Teachers' College, while also taking classes at the South Australian School of Arts (1957-1960). In 1963, when Hanrahan was 23 she moved to London to take a break from teaching tertiary art in Adelaide. Hanrahan furthered her studies at the Central School of Art in London.

“I wanted to try my life at something bigger. I wanted to get away from safety and walking with little steps." - Hanrahan on moving to London.

Upon her return Hanrahan was also a member of the Australian Women's Art Movement and the Women's Art Register. Both organisations strived for equal pay for female artists as well as increased exposure.

Hanrahan often combined writing with visual arts. She began writing her first book, The Scent of Eucalyptus (1973), a semi-autobiographical consideration of her childhood in the 1940s and 1950s in Thebarton, shortly after the death of her grandmother in 1968. Her edited diaries were published in 1998, revealing less than favourable comments about many of her contemporaries, although some friends and colleagues commented that it was interesting to understand how Hanrahan's brain worked. A biography by Annette Marion Stewart was published in the same year.

Art Hanrahan was a painter and printmaker, experimenting with printing styles such as screen printing, etching, relief printing, and woodblock and lino cutting. She would often revisit the same print in different styles and colours, such as Wedding Night, which has three variations.

Hanrahan's work is personal and private yet its themes are universal, portraying relationships between girlfriends, women and men, and the struggle against societal structures. These themes are constantly repeated throughout her oeuvre in prints, such as in Wedding night (1977) Both works depict Hanrahan's unease with women's roles in society, Her artwork is collected in numerous galleries in Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia. Her work Generations (1991) was used as the cover art for Mixed matches : interracial marriage in Australia, by June Duncan Owen.

Holdings The National Gallery of Australia holds some 453 of her drawings and prints. The Art Gallery of South Australia also holds over 200 of her prints. The National Gallery of Victoria holds six of her works, while QAGOMA holds 20, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales holds 17.

Writing Hanrahan's books were just as expressive and confronting as her artworks. Her books such as the Scent of Eucalyptus are described as breaking the suburban female mould, “in- scribing the female sexual, reproductive and excretory body in text”.

Her novels often had a main character similar to Hanrahan herself. Annette Stewart writes about the difficulty in being able to distinguish fact from fiction. “Confusion between reality and the imagination was key to barbara writing, lending it a particular and distinctive atmosphere.”

Hanrahan concludes: “What we want now in Adelaide are writers and artists who work from the heart of those commonplace suburban streets, who recognise the weirdness of the ordinary, who record it before the version of it we have now is swept away. We want passion and intensity, an art that comes from places like Port Adelaide and Thebarton and Holden Hill; that stays unofficially weird.“ It was also referenced in a short story, In Sunshine or in Shadow, by Kerryn Goldsworthy, published in The Adelaide Review in March 2003.

Works

The Scent of Eucalyptus (1973) Sea-Green (1974) The Albatross Muff (1977) Where the Queens All Strayed (1978) The Peach Groves (1980) The Frangipani Gardens (1980) Dove (1982) Kewpie Doll (1984) Annie Magdalene (1985) Dream People (1987) A Chelsea Girl (1987) Flawless Jade (1989) Iris in her Garden (1991) Michael and Me and the Sun (1992) Good Night Mr Moon (1992) The Diaries of Barbara Hanrahan, edited by Elaine Lindsay (1998)

Legacy The Barbara Hanrahan Fellowship for South Australian writers was established in Hanrahan's memory in 1994 by her partner, Jo Steele. A street in Thebarton is named after her, and in 1997 a building at the University of South Australia's City West campus was named to honour her memory.

Many of her papers and unpublished writings are held at the National Library of Australia.