Ann Newmarch brings political activism, feminism and local involvement to her Adelaide art from 1970s

Ann Newmarch (centre, from her Risking 50) with her 1975 screenprint on paper Vietnam Madonna and and the feminist Look Rich from the same year.
Images courtesy Flinders University Museum of Art and the Art Gallery of South Australia

Raised in a strict Adelaide Methodist household where art was deemed “corruptive”,  Ann Newmarch defied her parents to develop a politically charged practice in teaching and making.

Newmarch, a painter, printmaker, sculptor and professor, was a founder of the Progressive Art Movement and WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. Her work was political, feminist, emotional, personal, and complex.

Born in 1945, Newmarch attended Western Teachers’ College in 1966. She then graduated from the South Australian School of Art and became one of the few women to serve as an instructor there from 1969. Newmarch was introduced to the women’s movement in 1970 and balanced teaching, mothering and artmaking with community and cultural development.

As well as feminist issues in her earliest prints and paintings, Newmarch used the print medium to great effect in the 1970s and 1980s to rail against the Vietnam War, American imperialism, uranium mining and treatment of Aboriginal people. Her part in founding the Progressive Art Movement and Women’s Art Movement fostered the collective production of political prints and posters.

Newmarch contributed to many community arts projects, notably a 1986 cultural exchange sponsored by the Australia-China Council to create two large murals in Xianyang, Shaanxi Province, China. Created with fellow Australian artist Anne Morris and four artists in China, these murals addressed the theme of friendship between the nations.

Newmarch famously refused to exhibit in commercial galleries and the “male-dominated and profit-driven” arts industry. Newmarch's early work heavily featured silkscreen printing with more sculptural objects only introduced in the 1990s.

For her many commitments to society, Newmarch was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in 1989. In 2010, she was awarded the Australian Day Award for her photograph piece titled Women Hold Up Half the Sky – a tribute to her Auntie Peg who built a house on her own while raising eight children and working two jobs. This photograph was recreated as a postcard for four major galleries. Newmarch was highly commended in the Geoff Crowhurst Memorial Award category at the 2019 South Australian Ruby Awards.

Also in 2019, the gallery run by the inner-northern-Adelaide city of Prospect was renamed the Newmarch Gallery. It honoured Newmarch’s efforts in the 1980 in raising the profile of arts in the community and creating a strong grass roots movement, including art on stobie poles and murals plus the gallery itself. Newmarch was the first artist in residence with City of Prospect and the first woman to have a retrospective exhibition by the Art Gallery of South Australia.  

Newmarch used the studio at the her home in Beatrice Street, Prospect, as a space for paint and printmaking workshops, musical rehearsals and in 1982 and 1983 hosted the first national community project to be funded by the Australian Council.