About

Annie Shelley is an artist and PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia. Painting the Nile follows her journey exploring 19th century artworks of European women who travelled to ‘the Orient,’ a term once used to describe the area of North Africa, Egypt, the Sudan and the Middle East. Her research focuses on amateur and professional women artists who travelled independently or in the company or their husbands. The artists were great adventuresses and rejected the notion that the Orient was ‘no place for a lady’. They defied societal pressures to conform and overcame great physical obstacles whilst travelling and painting their journeys. These women artists and their work remain ‘barely visible’ within the Orientalist discourse, and rarely receive the critical acclaim typically afforded to male artists of the time. Annie’s research aims to change this.

Annie Shelley’s work is currently on exhibit in twenty-ONE+ from 18 June – 7 July, 2016 at Spectrum Project Place, Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA, Australia.