Rememories/imagetexts

This research paper places the three Research Projects 2 DIVINE, CARNIVAL, and HER STORIES: THE WENTWORTH WOMEN against the background of memory, remaking history, play, as well as hermeneutics. It is argued that the understanding of a work of art involves participation in its meaning by the audience which is not so much a mere receiver of information as a catalyst of the work's content. This Research Paper also attempts to place the three Research Projects, which when combined are entitled REMEMORIES/IMAGETEXTS, into a feminist remaking of history (in Barbara Kruger's sense), realigning the male-oriented histories with a female presence. Questioning the 'historical document' as the authority on history, and giving alternative versions of the life of Jeanne d'Arc and the life of Sarah Cox Wentworth are some of the concerns in the Research Projects. How these three Research Projects came to be linked is that each was originally exhibited during 1995 for the Twentieth Anniversary of International Women's Year, in venues from Penrith to Paddington. Their making spans many years, and in essence comes down to a fascination with the portrayal of women throughout history.That our images of women originally derived from how women were portrayed in carnival is one of the emerging themes, and that there are a number of different memories of specific events, depending on who is remembering them, and what their (hidden) agenda entails. In moving between time zones, questioning the portrayal of 'woman as sign', and subverting the traditional sign of woman, the artist puts forward the argument that women are the producers of signs and thus not merely objects as represented by sign