Eye to Eye

Eye to Eye examines 46 years of womanhood through the lens of artists Julie Millowick OAM and Jody Haines.

The year 1975 was a significant year for women’s rights – named International Women’s Year by the United Nations. Eye to Eye includes images from Millowick’s archive from 1975 to 1985 (the International Decade for Women), displaying a collection of photographs of Australian women in everyday life. Haines expands the conversation to the present with a series of new portraits, created in collaboration with local women and in response to the last 46 years. Central explorations include gender inequity, feminist futures, the politics of representation and where women see themselves positioned in 2021.

This exhibition unpacks the development of social and political un/truths of past and contemporary women’s liberation. Through this collaboration, the artists present a visual symbol for what we can learn from the women’s rights movement of the past and how the conversation of gender representation is evolving today.

Julie Millowick began her photographic career working in the darkroom of Athol Shmith, John Cato and Peter Barr. After completing her studies at Prahran College of Advanced Education, she worked for three years as a press and public relations photographer. The direction of her commercial folio then changed, and she worked as a corporate industrial photographer—lighting, both in the studio and on location, became the basis around which her imagery revolved.
Julie was part of the group exhibition Australian New Work at the National Gallery of Victoria and Australian Centre for Photography in 1977. She has exhibited and published regularly since then, with work being purchased by major photography collections in Australia. In 1993 she exhibited work in the exhibition Intimate Lives with leading International photographers Sally Mann, Nan Goldin and Jaques Henri Lartigue at the International Fotofeis in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The images are all 35mm in origin. Exhibited as Digital Prints scanned from folio quality silver gelatin prints, 35mm negatives or colour transparencies.