The Hotham Street Ladies

HOTHAM STREET LADIES STREET, 2022

Oigall projects

As women whose friendships and collective artistic endeavour originated in the City of Yarra we feel that it is timely to re-examine history of our local area through a gendered lens, and to consider the implications of honouring historical white male figures through street and place names as a legacy of the Victorian era in which the street pattern was cast as a net over the Yarra flats. Our hope is that this work will play a role in igniting discussion and debate about the role women and others have played in the history of the Yarra area, and a thumbs up to the City of Yarra heritage interpretation markers- four of seventy five of which name men. It will also challenge the precept that place names are fixed, opening up a discourse about how cultural change can and must be reflected in our public spaces for equity and diversity. 

The project is in three parts. The first is a photographic series. Clad in high vis couture HSL and their tradie entourage make their mark on their eponymous street. (Up)turning the tables on gender and power and irreverently questioning the history and narrative of place, they stage their own re-naming to emphasise not all stories are permanent or accurate.

The second part is a series of signs. Re-casting the association between ornament, decoration and the feminine in Melbourne’s Victorian suburbs, ghostly visages of terrace stucco ladies are printed onto and over prismatic road signs. Markers and signposts of anonymous, forgotten and invisible women made visible.

The third is an installation of our costumes- a high collaboration with local fashion designer Nevada Duffy along with a celebration of the Hotham Street 'tradies'.  Who have been immortalised in a special HSL 2023 calendar, ready to be pasted onto the walls of the site office lunchroom.