CONSTRUCTION WORK

CONSTRUCTION WORK was a solo exhibition resulting in Kate Just’s artist in residence project at Seventh Gallery and Women’s Art Register Artist in 2025. The exhibition was informed by Just’s research at the Women’s Art Register into histories of feminist art in Australia. During the residency and project at W.A.R., Kate undertook many visits to the W.A.R. archives and examined examples of political text across books, files, magazines and artworks. During her research, Kate came upon an advertisement for a curated performance exhibition at George Paton Gallery in 1980 called Women at Work, that was curated by Aleks Danko and Judy Annear at George Paton Gallery in 1980. The advertisement, designed by Danko, featured a hand drawn yellow and black sign with the bold text WOMEN AT WORK riffing off ‘MEN AT WORK’ construction signs. This image and text inspired Kate’s exhibition, which expands upon on the idea of construction work as a parallel metaphor for feminism - hands on, focussed on process, progress, and the active reshaping, reforming, and improving of social structures.