Elsie (and Minnie), an exhibition of new work by Zanny Begg, reflects on the origins of the women’s refuge movement in Australia and the ongoing crisis of gendered violence today.
17 June – 5 September 2025
Opening: 19 June 5.30-7.30pm
UTS Gallery
Elsie (and Minnie), an exhibition of new work by Zanny Begg, reflects on the origins of the women’s refuge movement in Australia and the ongoing crisis of gendered violence today.
Zanny Begg is an artist and filmmaker whose socially engaged practice employs documentary filmmaking, performance, and printmaking to explore issues of social and environmental justice. Her previous works have examined social histories of migration, feminism, gentrification, radical architecture, global trade, and ecological precarity across Australia. Begg’s work often involves collaboration with communities, as well as amateur and professional performers, utilising modes of re-enactment alongside documentary and archival techniques.
The exhibition features the single-channel film Elsie (and Minnie) and a three-channel video installation, The Yellow Wallpaper. An archival display, presented across UTS Gallery and UTS Library (Level 7), traces a chronology of key moments in the establishment of Elsie and showcases important material related to the Australian Women’s Liberation Movement, with a focus on historical Sydney groups. The display expands on themes in the exhibition and makes accessible to the public important audio and print materials never seen together before.
Elsie (and Minnie) also includes a rich public program series featuring significant contemporary and historical voices from the Australian feminist and women’s refuge movement. Further details to be announced.
About the artist
Zanny Begg (b. 1972) is an artist and filmmaker whose socially-engaged practice employs documentary, performance, and drawing to address issues of social and environmental justice. Her previous works have explored social histories of migration, feminism, gentrification, radical architecture, global trade, and ecological precarity across Australia. Begg’s work often involves collaboration with communities, actors, and amateur performers, utilising modes of reenactment alongside documentary and archival techniques.
Her work has been included in the Sharjah, Taipei, Labin, Limerick, Odessa and Istanbul Biennales; Statecraft (And Beyond), National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2022); MONA FOMA, Lutruwita/Tasmania (2021); Sydney Festival (2020); The National (2017), Utopia Pulse, Secession, Vienna (2014); and OK VIDEO Festival, Jakarta (2013). Begg’s work is currently included in two national tours; These Stories will be Different (MGNSW) and Between the Details: Video Art from the ACMI Collection (ACMI). She was the winner of the 66th Blake Prize Established Artist Residency (2021), winner of the inaugural ACMI and Artbank film commission (2018), winner of the Incinerator Art Award, Art for Social Change (2016), and winner of the Terrence and Lynnette Fern Cite Residency Paris (2016). She attended Werner Herzog's Rogue Film School, Munich in 2015 and has been awarded residencies in Barcelona, Paris, Yogyakarta, Chicago and Hong Kong.
She is the current Director of Shoalhaven Regional Gallery, and recently completed a public art commission for Orange Regional Gallery.
Gallery directions
UTS Gallery
Level 4, Peter Johnson Building (Building 6)
702 Harris St, Ultimo,
University of Technology, Sydney
This project was generously supported by VACS Major Commissioning Projects (Individuals and Groups) grant from Creative Australia.
Elsie (and Minnie) is a UTS Gallery & Art Collection commission, presented in partnership with UTS Library, UTS Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion, UTS Business School, and UTS Media Lab.
Banner image: Elsie: A Study of a Collective, 1975, film by Lis Rus and Tina Słoń (still). © Lis Rus and Tina Słoń 1975.