Virginia Fraser
(b. 1947, Melbourne, d. 2021, Melbourne)

Virginia Fraser was an artist, writer, editor and curator who made an indelible mark on the Australian art world. Initially trained as a newspaper and radio journalist, it was her love of art that eventually overtook and became her predominant practice. Since she first began making Super 8 films in the 1980s, Fraser worked largely, though not exclusively, in light-based media: photography, small-gauge film, video and light.

Exhibited at Melbourne Now are a series of magazine covers for the fictional publication FEMMO™, devised by Fraser in collaboration with fellow artist Elvis Richardson between 2014 and 2017. Combining portraiture with attention-seeking headlines, FEMMO™ imagines a world in which feminism is central to, and informs, every topic. Specifically, FEMMO™ is a tongue-in-cheek stab at the Australian art world’s gender-biased status quo.

The FEMMO™ covers have been exhibited in galleries around Australia, including at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Fremantle Arts Centre, Incinerator Gallery and TCB Melbourne, and won awards at the 2015 and 2016 Fremantle Print Awards; however, as the artists themselves explain on Richardson’s website:

the National Library of Australia declined to issue FEMMO™ with an International Standard Serial Number because it had ‘no content’. FEMMO™ disagrees. FEMMO™ is joining the surface litter of Australian art history.

Thematically, FEMMO™ continues Fraser’s long-running interest in art produced by Australian and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women artists. In 2010, Fraser completed a research fellowship at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra, where she researched evidence of women as technicians, producers and entrepreneurs in the first two decades of Australian cinema.

Following Fraser’s death in January 2021, the National Gallery of Australia wrote: ‘we remember Virginia as one of the most rigorous and sustained advocates for women’s contributions to the cultural life of this country’. She is remembered not only for her solo works, but also the many video and installation works made in collaboration with her long-time partner, artist Destiny Deacon. Together, the pair have exhibited at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville, Victoria; Dong Gang Museum of Photography, Yeongwol-gun, Gangwon-do Province, South Korea; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Havana Biennale, Havana, Cuba; Biennale of Sydney; Documenta, Kassel, Germany; and many more. Among the numerous publications Fraser edited were A Book About Australian Women (1974), co-authored with photographer Carol Jerrems; Screw Loose: An Uncalled for Memoir by Peter Blazey (1997); and Central Business Dreaming (2008).

Fraser’s work is held in major Australian state galleries, universities and private collections around the world.