Keeping Score: A dynamic exhibition of artworks that document the exponential growth of women’s AFL in Western Australia, opens at The Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery this March long weekend.
The exhibition, Keeping Score, celebrates the incredible growth in women’s football from the first recorded game in 1915 through to today.
Award winning Broome Artist, Naomie Hatherley, paints players in action onto discarded metal scoreboard numbers. The plates are then arranged to reference dates and statistics celebrating the history of Western Australian women’s football (AFL).
“With so much depressing chaos and confusion in the world right now, the magic of the women’s game shines like a beacon of joy,” Hatherley said.
“It is such a positive story of the power of community and inclusion.”
The exhibition will feature an interactive scoreboard, where visitors can request their own ‘score’ using painted number plates sourced from a Geraldton football club and featuring the women of the Great Northern Women’s Football League (GNWFL).
Keeping Score features players from the West Kimberley, Perth and Geraldton regions between 2016 and 2021.
Photographic works that capture the spirit of the GNWFL by Barry Mitchell and his team from Snapaction Sports along with Yamaji-Wajarri-Badimaya and Ngapuhi man Tamati Smith will also be included in the exhibition.
Brunette Lenkic, co-author of Play On! The Hidden History of Women’s Australian Rules Football will be opening the show.
Hatherley started photographing her local games in Broome in 2016 when her daughter signed up to play and says she was inspired to pay homage to these local amazons.
“I was really taken by the team spirit and how quickly my daughter felt a part of it.”
Hatherley says that brushing the surface of the old scoreboard numbers with oil paint is about as close as she’s ever going to get to playing football.
“I couldn’t play footy to save myself, so I’m playing footy vicariously through art – the only way I know how to get amongst the action.”
The exhibition is free of charge and will be open to the public at The Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery in Fremantle from March 5, 10am – 4pm.
Source: Media Release
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