Marriage: Love and Law exhibition catalogue - Flipbook - Page 88
QUESTIONING
MARRIAGE
Catalysed by the Vietnam War and student-led protests in the
late-1960s, the rights movement challenged the institutions
and ideologies that disempowered women and other minority
groups. Marriage was called into question. The ideal that had been
promoted to young people in the post-war era promised stability
and happiness. But for many, the day-to-day lived experience of
marriage bore little resemblance to this. Feminists, seeing marriage
as a fundamentally patriarchal system, drew attention to the lives
of married women, and artists gave voice to these perspectives.
68
68 Barbara Hanrahan
Iris Pearl dreams
of a wedding
Paper lithograph
1967
Women, and the motifs of marriage, sexuality,
fertility and memory, occupy a central role in the work
of Barbara Hanrahan. In Iris Pearl dreams of a wedding,
she asks us to consider whether the ideal of marriage—
particularly a woman’s experience within it—measures
up to the lived reality.
National Gallery of Australia
NGA 94.74
88
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