Ann Foster Newmarch (9 June 1945 – 13 January 2022) OAM, known as "Annie", was a South Australian painter, printmaker, sculptor and academic, with an international reputation, known for her community service to art, social activism and feminism.
[14] Embracing feminism from the early 1970s, her art practice highlights that all representation is political and the absence of voice is in itself an acceptance of the status quo.
Her early work heavily featured silkscreen printing,[14] a relatively cheap and accessible form of art, and one at which she excelled.
An artist has a responsibility as an image make to concerns wider than herself or her art.Newmarch's most well-known work, Women Hold Up Half the Sky!
(1978) is a colour screenprint based on a photograph created in 1978, was so titled as a play on the phrase "Women hold up half the sky" made by former Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong.
[17] Originally designed as a poster, it shows a photo of a middle-aged woman carrying a man in her arms, with the words written at the bottom.
She much admired by Newmarch, seeing her as someone who lived an unconventional and feminist lifestyle, having mostly built a house on her own, learning the work usually done by tradespeople and doing it herself.
The tiny 1940s snapshot on which the screenprint was based was "a little summer picture of something [Peggy] had done for a dare when a whole lot of people at a party had said ‘I bet you couldn’t lift your husband up’".
[19] In 1974 Newmarch was co-founder, with philosopher Brian Medlin, of the Progressive Art Movement (PAM), which focused on political issues, social concerns, and education.
[21] Other artists associated with PAM included Robert Boynes,[22] Mandy Martin[21] Margaret Dodd, Bert Flugelman, and Ken Searle.
[4] She left a rich legacy of artwork, as well as raising awareness of many issues, and founding the Progressive Art Movement and mentoring many women artists.