Kate Wyllie
Kate Wyllie is remembered as a woman who sought to defend her rights and those of her people.
Category Archives: Activism
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Thyra Talvase Bethell
During the First World War her strong personality and status as the chairman’s wife enabled her to establish a new kind of women’s leadership. Women’s voluntary work was in demand, and largely by use of the recently installed telephone system she organised Red Cross nursing at Hanmer Springs and supervised emergency measures in the influenza epidemic of November 1918. She was appointed an MBE in 1919. The Red Cross remained a lifelong interest: Thyra headed the Culverden sub-centre for over 50 years and was involved in the local and national organisation during the Second World War. She was made a councillor of honour of the New Zealand Red Cross Society in 1957.
Niki De Saint Phalle
The Nouveau Realisme movement, and Niki de Saint Phalle’s work in particular, had a significant effect on the development of conceptual art. Her works often combined performance and plastic art in new ways, blending and dismantling hierarchies between painting, sculpture, and performance in a way that would influence conceptual artists.
Iriaka Matiu Rātana
New Zealand politician Iriaka Rātana was to serve in the House for 20 years. She was an unusual politician in her early years, unsophisticated yet eloquent, gentle and invariably polite.
Tina Modotti
Long overshadowed by her extraordinary life and her relationship with Edward Weston, she was viewed as his muse, rather than as a gifted photographer in her right. Despite a remarkably short career in photography – just seven years – she created a body of iconic images that confirmed her place in history.
Corita Kent
During her lifetime, and especially in the twenty years following her death, Kent’s work never quite worked its way into the mainstream. Being a female artist and a nun, she did not fit into the detached, jaded aesthetic narrative of Pop.
Agnes Denes
As a founding practitioner of environmental or “Eco-logical” art, Denes’ impact on the art world is everlasting. By creating with the existing landscape as medium, rather than intervening, she inspired a gentler, more productive form of Land Art.
Mereana Tōpia
Mereana Tōpia, better known as Maria, and her daughter Hēni Hoana or Jane Tōpia, were outstanding leaders in their local communities. Among their many activities they fostered the practice of traditional Māori arts and crafts.
Hēni Hoana Tōpia
Mereana Tōpia, better known as Maria, and her daughter Hēni Hoana or Jane Tōpia, were outstanding leaders in their local communities. Among their many activities they fostered the practice of traditional Māori arts and crafts.
Pauline Boty
Unlike her few other female contemporaries, such as Bridget Riley, Boty refused to to negate her feminine side and was not overly concerned with seeming serious, intellectual or dispassionate at the expense of her true self. Boty instead celebrated these supposedly “feminine” traits. Her work came unabashedly from a woman’s perspective and it was emotionally engaged and celebratory towards women’s sexual desires.