[4] Batten began her art career as a craft person who went on to paint, but by the early 1980s she was focused on performing and recording ritual based[5] works that foregrounded environmental and feminist issues.
[12] In 1980 Batten became a founding member of the Women's Gallery in Wellington along with a group of other women artists both based in Wellington and from around the country including Fiona Clark, Allie Eagle, Marion Evans, Claudia Pond Eyley, Keri Hume, Anna Keir, Bridie Lonie, Heather McPherson, Joanna Paul, Nancy Peterson, Helen Rockel, Carole Stewart and Tiffany Thornley.
She visited the Woman's Building in San Francisco where she was able to observe leading edge experimental lesbian and feminist art.
[15] Batten remained a feminist artist throughout the eighties and nineties known for her collaborative art projects for women and ritual performances.
She singled Batten out for her use of pastel colours, flower imagery and ‘vaginal forms’ for their too obvious reference to feminist concerns.
[15] Other early arguments against the feminist art movement claimed that, ‘Femininity is not involved any more than masculinity in the work of men painters.
[50] As art historian Katryn Baker has noted the 1980s, “were a decade marked by discussions that aimed to clarify the true meaning of feminism, its various connotations, and how to apply it to the art world in a way that would enable other women artists and the broader public to comprehend the feminist discourse without viewing it as “too” political or dangerous.” Batten took up the topic again in Broadsheet in 1986.
[52] The piece was a rebuttal to the essay Remissions: Toward a Deconstruction of Phallic Univocality written by art critic and theorist Lita Barrie in 1986.