BECOMING JULIE VISIBLE and THE CAROUSEL OF INVISIBILITY

By Steven Cavanagh

“I don’t consider myself as a photographer” says Julie Williams. Great artists often defy being pinned down as any one thing. Like all great art, there is contradiction and provocation…

The Carousel of Invisibility offers a multidimensional approach to the life of Jessie Hickman through photography, moving image and installation. The exhibition takes a surreal and empathetic dive into the enigma that is Hickman who was born in Burraga, New South Wales in 1890. Her life was imbued by fact, rumour and allegation. She was an exceptional horsewoman, having been trained in a travelling circus from a young age. Hickman became notorious as a bushranger around the Wollemi region in the 1920s. As part of her bushranger modus operandi, Hickman embodied multiple personas and was often referred to as ‘The Lady Bushranger’.

The work in Smother is a celebration of Hickman’s defiance, exploring the psychological landscape of identity and bringing attention to the often-invisible contributions of women in Australian history. Double exposures and black-and-white film photography is used to create ghostly images, rich with metaphor. Multi layered imagery showing us what it might feel like to inhabit the psychological landscape of Hickman. Traces and murmurs of the faces that visualise the many characters embodied by Hickman punctuate the landscape. They appear, come into focus and disappear again, searching and beckoning, as do all figures of history. They are evocative and provocative. Like early 20th-century French surrealist photographer Claude Cahun, they reveal gender and identity as malleable and fluid. They defy being fully understood or described. Meaning is created by what overlaps, not just what is shown. Hickman’s characters are seen across the haze of time and given voice through the empathetic lens of Williams.

The haunting and provocative video The Carousel of Invisibility gives language to the personas deeply embedded in the psyche of Hickman. Like Muybridge’s Galloping Horse, a series of still images is viewed in succession to create the illusion of movement. A horse, a carousel horse, stands, rears up and bucks in dramatic defiance. Women emerge and recede into the surrounding bushland as did Hickman when she needed to disappear. Hands cradle as if holding a baby, the landscape or the self. Much like the great photographer Dorothea Lange, hands reveal the weight of labour, tenderness and suffering. The moving mechanics of a windmill punctuate the silence. There is an invitation to engage visually, audibly and emotionally via multiple creative devices that provide the viewer with emotional light and shade.

The main character in Bushland Intimacy is the dense and formidable Australian bushland, on which hopes and dreams are projected. The stage is set. The corrugated iron hut and window. A nylon curtain strung between trees, providing a cinematic screen, billows back to reveal even more hidden and imagined scenes. This sensitive repurposing of a domestic item that speaks of comfort and home; unattainable dreams for Hickman. The valley and the escarpment reminding us of the Sublime. It’s that intense mix of awe and wonder, or even terror, when facing something so vast.

Place and time are met by overlapping impressions. We hover, float, time travel and fall into digital algorithms. We never quite land on two feet and never quite know if we are meeting Jessie or Julie. Perhaps we are meeting both, as seen in The Commemoration, a beautifully whimsical collage of chance and synchronicity spanning 100 years. History is ephemeral and rewritable. Truth and fiction placing the viewer into multiple environments and realities.

Within the landscape of colonial Australian history, figures rise and fade, their stories woven into the fabric of the nation’s identity. Among them is Australian bushranger Jessie Hickman. After her bushranging days, Hickman settled in the Widden Valley, New South Wales. Hickman passed away in 1936. Her life and legend embody the contradictions and complexities of gender and experience within the narrative of early 20th-century Australia.

The Carousel of Invisibility serves as a dreamlike dance between visibility and invisibility operating within our colonial history and cultural memory. Williams’ innovative sequencing of still images builds a narrative arc and indicates inspiration from early influences such as Duane Michals. Each frame building upon the last to tell a cohesive and evocative story without reducing Hickman’s life to an Australiana cliché. Playfully and sometimes cheekily, as seen in the two images from the Invisible Horse series, audiences are encouraged to re-examine cultural identity and patriarchal mythmaking. It’s also a timely and personal journey for Williams, who is examining what it is to be a contemporary artist and to become fully visible as Julie Visible. Inviting us to recognise and reclaim space for women who have historically been sidelined or fallen away from view.

© Steven Cavanagh, 2025

Steven Cavanagh is an artist, curator, writer and educator who works with photography, moving image, installation and performance: @cavanagh_steven

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