Canberra exhibition challenges inherited roles of womanhood

Maiden Mother Crone, a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra brings together Del Kathryn Barton, Emily Hunt and Jess Johnson to challenge inherited ideas about women's lives. Almost 70 works use magic, folklore, science fiction and richly detailed imagery to explore identities that resist simple categories.

The exhibition centres on the archetypes of the maiden, mother and crone, asking how women inhabit those roles and how they can pull them apart. It is the first exhibition to show the three artists together. Each has a distinct presentation, but their works connect across the galleries.

Many media, different visual languages

Drawing and painting sit alongside textiles, ceramics, jewellery, sculpture and video. Gallery director Bree Pickering says handmade processes underpin the exhibition's examination of old stereotypes, while the breadth of materials allows intimate work and expansive installations to coexist.

Barton, a two-time Archibald Prize winner, is represented by her elaborate contemporary practice. Her work was an early inspiration for Hunt. Works identified in the exhibition include Barton's The Daughter from 2012 and Sing Blood-wings Sing from 2017.

The crone as a figure of change

Hunt's work draws on magic and folklore. She says the witch or crone can represent redemption, wisdom and power rather than the invisibility often imposed on older women. For her, that figure can also become a force for change. Her contributions include sculpture and wall drawing, as well as work from The Pandemonium Series made in 2026.

Hunt presents belief in magic as central to her own artistic practice. This is the artist's account of the ideas behind her work, rather than a factual claim established by the exhibition. She says the show is open and generous in its approach, while acknowledging that its subjects and ornamentation will not appeal equally to everyone.

Bright surfaces and questions about power

Johnson has spent more than a decade developing the science-fiction universe seen in her drawings. Historical and mythological archetypes appear alongside modern ones, reworked within that imagined world. Her exhibition works include textiles as well as drawings, with Maw, made in 2023, among the pieces on display.

She says brightly coloured geometry and dense detail can draw viewers into more subversive themes. Hints of narrative, mythology and symbolism provide an entry point to recurring concerns about power, control, systems of authority and the ways populations are governed.

Senior curator Serena Bentley says the exhibition celebrates women who defy easy classification and exposes contradictions in both lived and imagined experiences of womanhood. The aim is to question the inherited categories themselves, rather than simply place the artists within them.

The exhibition runs at the National Portrait Gallery from November 14, 2026, to May 23, 2027. Its focus on the maiden, mother and crone is used as a starting point for a broader discussion of age, identity, creativity and the freedom to resist assigned roles.

Illustrative painting materials photographed in 2016, not artworks from the Canberra exhibition.