Crone: artist Sally Rees’s celebration of older women
Historically, we have demonised the crone. Want her silenced, vanished. She is of no use. But at their most unvalued, these women have been freed.
When you think of a crone, what do you imagine? An insult of a word, perhaps. An ancient and ugly moniker, a witchy fairytale label implying a body curled like a comma over a walking stick. Traditionally, crones are sinister old women luring Hansel and Gretel to their gingerbread house for a tasty bit of cannibalism or delivering disruptive prophesies to Macbeth that goad him into murderous action. The word derives from the old North French caroigne, meaning carrion. The decaying flesh of dead animals. Charming. Historically, we have demonised the crone. Want her silenced, vanished. She is of no use.
Yet a major Australian gallery is now celebrating the older woman, the crone, in all her beauty, wisdom, fearlessness and complexity. How often, I ask, do we see females of a certain age platformed in prestigious art institutions? Rarely, if ever. But now Hobart’s audaciously subversive Mona has turned over a portion of its space to an exhibition titled, simply, Crone. It’s by a woman heading into cronedom herself who wants to reclaim the power of the word. And it’s revelatory.
Tasmanian artist Sally Rees has just turned 50 and is looking forward to her own journey into crone-world. On the cusp, she’s loving what she sees. She has a strong, nurturing coterie of crone-women around her, and in birthday celebration chose to photograph 17 of them. You enter a darkened Mona hall pockmarked with ghostly white video screens, the crones floating from their blank surfaces like pop-video chanteuses from the ’80s. Their faces brim with story, character, compassion. And how do Rees’s home-grown crones differ from their counterparts? “We’re less concerned with preserving poise compared with women from other countries,” she declares cheekily.
She’s created a subversive temple to the sacred feminine. Many of her women wear beakish noses; a witty nod to the archetypal village crone dismissed and mocked. But not this lot. This is reinvention. These women have found their voices. They make self-chosen bird calls, flooding the eerie space with fantastical sounds of the Australian bush. Rees has painted the sounds that emerge from the women’s lips in a burst of exquisite colour. It is luminously beautiful.
“They’re these fantastical, imaginary bird women,” Rees explains. “I wanted to break up the stereotypes of the older woman, show the diversity of this species.” The bird metaphor alludes to flight; to the freedom and sense of release beyond the childbearing years of relentless sexualisation and objectification. “I’m so sick of looking at pictures of beautiful young women,” Rees says. “I look at these people [in my exhibition] as something to age towards. This is an opportunity to write the journey for yourself. These females are so smart, so quick and intelligent. We need to make sure women like this are valued.”
Mona’s decision to turn over some of its glorious space to these post-menopausal heroines is heartening. “I’d like people to feel they’re in a room of older women,” Rees says. “That they’re taking away with them a sense of females who are powerful and connected. It’s about wearing the accusation of ‘witch’ – and celebrating a network.”
Crone is on until November. I urge you to see it and revel in a great, underappreciated female artist at the height of her powers, who’s tipping a hat to women who’ve learnt the power in saying no. Who wear their physicality honestly, with no artifice. Who – at their most unvalued – have perhaps been freed. Because many of these women look like they’ve found a vast liberation on the other side of the menopause, freed from the misreadings of male scrutiny and released, finally, to be who they really want to be. Louder, more brazen, less careful. Rees’s women are not silent or invisible in their crone phase, blazing with their beautifully honest bird voices. This is my future, if I’m lucky. Bring it on.
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