Council joins with the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia for C3West Project

Thursday, 11 March 2021

Women of Kingswood speak about their aspirations for the future of their community.

Launching in May this year in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia’s C3West program, Skirts examines issues around women’s community safety in the suburb of Kingswood.

Working with Western Sydney-based artist Linda Brescia, Skirts brings women from Kingswood and surrounding suburbs together to demonstrate the power of the collective and standing up against barriers that can come between individual and community wellbeing.

Curated by MCA Senior Curator of C3West, Pedro de Almeida, Skirts is a group with a vision - they are the women who live, work, study and socialise in Kingswood and who aspire for positive change for themselves, each other and their community.

Penrith Mayor Karen McKeown OAM said, “We’re thrilled to be partnering for the second time with the MCA for another C3West project. Kingswood is a resilient, welcoming, open minded community and we value this empowering creative project that will strengthen the neighbourhood.”

Since September 2020, artist Linda Brescia has engaged with a diverse group of women by facilitating workshops and creating a safe space for creativity and dialogue in collaboration with award-winning writer, Felicity Castagna.

The outcome being a manifesto that combines poetic personal observations of women’s daily experiences and aspirations with a list of actions. The manifesto will inform facets of the ensuing program including artworks and activations for Kingswood’s public spaces starting from May.

MCA Director, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE, said: “For over 15 years, the MCA has been working in collaboration with Western Sydney arts organisations, businesses and local government to enable artists to address key issues of community concern. C3West demonstrates how artists can make an impact with communities and I am so pleased Penrith City Council, one of our very first partners, is working with us again.”
Skirts will take place in Kingswood from Sunday 30 May to Sunday 5 September 2021. For programming updates, visit the website.

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About the artist
Linda Brescia is a Western Sydney-based artist who investigates the banalities and complexities of everyday life experiences and rituals through painting, photography, sculpture and performance. Her practice explores dynamics around visibility and invisibility, masking, care and self-assertion.

Brescia has a long history of facilitating workshops and community projects for numerous organisations and groups, particularly in Western Sydney. She participated as an artist mentor in Momentum (2015), a unique engagement project between the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Sunnyfield disability services, funded by Arts NSW and Parramatta Council, that saw 12 emerging artists from Western Sydney living with disability respond to art in the contemporary galleries.

The solo exhibition Linda Brescia: Holding up the Sky was presented at Fairfield City Museum & Gallery (2018–2019), and Brescia's work has been presented in exhibitions and programs for Artspace, Sydney; Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre; Cementa; King Street Gallery Sydney; MOP, Sydney and Parramatta Artists' Studios where she is currently an artist in residence at their Rydalmere studios. Her work has been collected by Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Artcell Collection Management, Blacktown City Council and private collectors. In 2020 Brescia was awarded the Blacktown City Art Prize for her portrait of American patron of the arts Peggy Guggenheim.

About C3West
One of the MCA’s key programs, C3West brings together artists, businesses, government partners and arts organisations to create projects that give voice to community issues with a focus on Western Sydney. Since 2006, C3West has worked in areas as diverse as Penrith, Liverpool, Goulburn, Blacktown and Hurstville, aligning corporate social investment with community development.
C3West places contemporary artists at the core of our projects with the belief that they can bring unique value to situations beyond the gallery context.

Information contained within this news release was correct as at Thursday, 11 March 2021.