Acknowledgement of Country

Dharug

Bayadyinyang budyari Dharug yiyura Dharug Ngurra.
Bayady’u budyari Dharug Warunggadgu baranyiin barribugu.
Bayady’u budyari wagulgu yiyuragu Ngurra bimalgu Blacktown City. Flannel flowers dyurali bulbuwul.
Yanmannyang mudayi Dharug Ngurrawa. Walama ngyini budbud dali Dharug Ngurra Dharug yiyura baranyiin barribugu.

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English

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of this Land, the Dharug people, and their continued connection to Country.
We pay our respects to Elders from yesterday to tomorrow.
We extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples of Blacktown City where the flannel flowers still grow proud and strong.
We will walk softly on this land and open our hearts to Country as the Dharug people have for tens of thousands of years.

Credit to: Dharug woman Rhiannon Wright, daughter of Leanne ‘Mulgo’ Watson Redpath and granddaughter of Aunty Edna Watson

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Join us in celebrating senior-career female identifying artists whose work has been shaped by their connection to Blacktown. This exhibition features artworks from the Blacktown City Art Collection by both local and national artists, with a focus on the stories of Blacktown and Western Sydney; connecting memory, identity and place.

A cornerstone of the exhibition is Vivienne Binns’ iconic project Mothers’ Memories, Others’ Memories—a landmark collaborative community artwork created in Blacktown between 1979 and 1981. Recognised as one of Australia’s earliest examples of community-engaged art, this project honours women’s stories, memories, and lived experiences.

Building on the legacy of Mothers’ Memories, Others’ Memories, Blacktown Arts is proud to partner with the Older Women’s Network to amplify the contemporary experiences of women in Blacktown. Under the artistic direction of Amani Haydar, this project will culminate in a series of artworks and personal stories created by local women.

Complementing the exhibition is a vibrant public program designed to invite deepen your engagement with the artworks, their stories, the artists, and the Blacktown community.

We gratefully acknowledge the Blacktown Arts and Crafts Group for their support and key role in co-facilitating Mothers’ Memories, Others’ Memories.

Family Day inspired by A Real Experience

Gather the family and spend a morning at The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre making, crafting and learning at our Family Day inspired by A Real Experience.

Full program to be announced.

The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre
Saturday 30 August

10 am to noon
Free to attend
Registrations required

Bios

Amani Haydar is an award-winning author, visual artist, advocate for women’s health and safety and a former lawyer, based in western Sydney on Dharug land. In 2018 Amani’s self-portrait titled Insert Headline Here was a finalist in the Archibald Prize. As an active visual artist and former Archibald Prize finalist, Amani collaborates with organisations like Settlement Services International (SSI) and the Older Women’s Network to deliver visual arts and storytelling workshops for people from migrant communities. Her illustrations have been featured in publications such as Admissions: Voices within Mental Health, The Very Best Doughnut by Randa Abdel-Fattah, Safar by Sarah Malik and The Racial Politics of Australian Multiculturalism by Ghassan Hage.

Amani’s ground-breaking feminist memoir The Mother Wound (Pan Macmillan, 2021) explores the effects of domestic abuse and state-sanctioned violence on women and has received several awards including the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-fiction and the 2022 Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, and it was also long-listed for The Walkley Book Award in 2021. The Mother Wound has recently been translated into Arabic, allowing Arabic readers worldwide to engage with the Arab-Australian experience. Amani’s writing has also been featured in collections such as Racism, Arab Australian Other, Sweatshop Women Volume Two, and anthology After Australia.

Amani was the recipient of the 2021 UTS Faculty of Law Alumni Award and was named Local Woman of the Year for Bankstown at the 2020 NSW Premier’s Woman of the Year Awards in recognition of her advocacy against domestic violence. Drawing on her lived experiences and legal background, Amani has served on the boards of Bankstown Women’s Health Centre and the Australian Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights.

You can find Amani on Instagram here

The Older Women’s Network (OWN) has been a vital, strong and consistent voice for older women in NSW for more than 37 years.

OWN have been at the forefront of progressive change, activism and advocacy since their humble beginnings when a group of women from the NSW Combined Pensioners Association decided to do something for older women in 1985.

OWN have gone from strength to strength as a dynamic members-led organisation expanding throughout NSW with around 18 groups.

Over the years, OWN has developed services and resources for older women and has written and contributed to numerous influential reports on key issues for older women such as income security, homelessness, ageism, wellbeing, abuse of older people and domestic violence. OWN have played a big part in putting these issues at the forefront of public policy debates. Equally important is OWN’s history of friendship, mutual support and, of course, fun!

Born 1940, Wyong, New South Wales. Lives and works in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory.

Vivienne Binns is known primarily for her process-based painting practice, though she has also worked extensively across enamel, performance, installation, and as an artist-in-community. Binns rose to prominence in the 1960s with her psychedelic depictions of sexual imagery, which marked a turning point in the history of proto-feminist art. She was a key figure in the Women’s Art Movement (WAM), notably participating in the establishment of the Woman’s Art Register.

Binns is also credited with developing community arts in Australia, following a series of landmark collaborative projects in the 1970s and 1980s that aimed to increase public engagement with the field of creativity. Over the last 30 years, Binns has focused on her painting practice, addressing subjects including colonial explorations in the Asia-Pacific and Australia’s cultural connections to the region, as well as formal concerns relating to pattern and surface treatment, which invoke a range of art historical lineages

 

This project is presented by Blacktown Arts and supported by Blacktown City Council and the NSW Government through Create NSW.

A Real Experience is presented by Blacktown Arts in collaboration with the Older Women’s Network.

 

 

 

 

Image Credits:

Artwork by Vivienne Binns and in collaboration with The Blacktown Arts and Craft Group, Mothers’ Memories Others’ Memories, 1981 photography by Jennifer Leahy, Silversalt Photography
Amani Haydar in studio, 2024, courtesy of artist
Older Women’s Network, 2025, photography by Garry Trinh
Vivienne Binns in her studio, 2021, photography by Zan Wimberley

I’m an Artist

I’m an Artist

Blacktown Arts supports artists through annual opportunities across prizes, exhibitions, funding opportunities, and studio spaces for local creatives.

Learn MoreI’m an Artist
Blacktown City Art Prize

Blacktown City Art Prize

Blacktown City’s annual acquisitive art prize open to artists across Australia, with a prize pool of over $23,500.

Learn MoreBlacktown City Art Prize

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