| Venue: | Royal Exhibition Building |
| Location: | Melbourne |
| Patron: | Queen Alexandra |
| Organizers: | Alice, Lady Northcote |
The first Australian Exhibition of Women's Work was held for five weeks in 1907 in Melbourne. It featured the decorative arts and those associated with women. Contributors included Susanne Vilhelmine Gether and The Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW, solo violinist Gertrude Healy, painter and potter Flora Annie Landells, designer Eirene Mort, Tasmanian wood carver Ellen Nora Payne, composer and conductor Georgette Peterson, kindergarten expert Emmeline Pye, and painter and interior designer Daisy Rossi. The exhibition opened on 23 October and closed on 30 November at the Royal Exhibition Building.[1]
The exhibition was created by committees of women across Australia, and around the British Empire e.g. in London, Madras and Bloemfontein, South Africa. It was considered a catalyst for further change, as contributors saw what others had made, when they came to see their own work.
The exhibition's poster was chosen in open competition and designed by H.L. Atkinson from Bendigo, Victoria. It showed six craftswomen being welcomed at Melbourne's Royal Exhibition Building.
The exhibition featured the decorative arts and those associated with women. However women were receiving education and training in several areas, and the exhibition was seen as the harvest of original and applied novel work. Women had always created art but the exhibition hoped to show how these skills could be turned into a business as designers or trained draughtswomen. Needlework art had over 1,000 entries.Eirene Mort who had already completed work for Liberty's was one of the exhibitions supporters. She designed the certificates given to class winners.[2] She had hundreds of entries herself in a variety of classes. Her designs were noted for her use of Australian flora and fauna as subject matter.
Music was one of the arts - Georgette Peterson's music featured in a book by Ida Sherbourne Outhwaite and her sister and Peterson conducted a choir of 1,300 women. Florence Maud Ewart served as co-conductor for the exhibition, and she won first prize for her composition "God Guide Australia,"[3]
Prizes and medals were given for exhibits and for essays. The medals were bronze, and they included the motto "The Cross of Christ is My Light".
The exhibition has been credited with being "the most complete expression of the state of decorative arts at the start of the century".[4]
The exhibition's impact was very high. The national parliament, and all the state parliaments, had a day off in honour of the exhibition's opening. The driving force for the exhibition had been Alice, Lady Northcote, wife of the UK Conservative politician and Denmark's Queen Alexandra was the patron.[6] It was opened by Alice, Lady Northcote and Pattie Deakin who were the wives of Australia's Governor General and its Prime Minister. Fifteen thousand people attended on the first day for the opening ceremony, and over the five weeks there were 250,000 visitors.[7]
The exhibition was intended to celebrate women's work and to educate.[7] However, in 1907 the women of Melbourne were not yet allowed to vote in state elections.[6] Deakin organised a creche,[7] and there were demonstrations of kindergarten teaching by Emmeline Pye from Melbourne Teachers' College.