Juno Gemes

Gemes studied at the University of Sydney and the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) and graduated in 1964.[4] In 1968 Gemes directed The Human Body Australia's first experimental theatre group, established with Johnny Allen and Clem Gorman.[5][6] Some of The Human Body Performances at the Powerhouse warehouse in Haymarket, featured a geodesic light dome built by Jacky Joy Jacobson and Michael Glasheen from 5,000 light bulbs.[7] Gemes worked in theatre and film, and worked in London sporadically in the late 1960s and 1970s, where she wrote for the London-based underground newspaper International Times. While in London, Gemes performed in some of Yoko Ono's work including the avant-garde film Bottoms and a performance piece The scream at the Perfumed Garden.[8]

Gemes began exhibiting her photography in Australia in 1966, and held her first solo exhibition, "We Wait No More", in 1982.[9] In 1971, Gemes became involved with the Yellow House Artist Collective in Potts Point, Sydney.[3] Collaborating with another member of the Collective, landscape artist Mick Glasheen, to document traditional stories about Uluru.[7] They stayed in the Central Desert for six months in a geodesic dome seeking out the Pitjantjara elders in the area.[7]

Gemes is known for her photographs depicting the cultural and political struggle of indigenous peoples in Australia,[10][11] including land rights, the handing back of Uluru to the traditional owners, and the National Apology to the Stolen Generations in the Federal Parliament.[12] Gemes describes Nothing Personal by James Baldwin and Richard Avedon, which examines American culture including civil rights and the rise of black nationalism,[13] as an early influence in her work.[14] In 1976, Gemes photographed American civil rights leader James Baldwin on the rooftop of the Athenaeum Hotel in London.[15][10][16]

Under Another Sky, Juno Gemes Photography 1968–1988, a survey of Gemes work from over twenty years was exhibited in Budapest and Paris in the late 1980s.[1]

In 2018, Gemes told The Sydney Morning Herald her reason for taking up photography: "It was because I saw that Aboriginal people were invisible that I took up the camera." Much of her work has documented the Aboriginal rights and land rights movements,[14] from the Aboriginal Tent Embassy to 2008 when she was one of ten photographers selected to officially document the Apology to Australia's Indigenous peoples.[17]

Gemes has thirty works in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Australia.[18] Her papers are held at the National Library of Australia and the Mitchell Library of the State Library of New South Wales.[19]

In 1986 Gemes and her partner Australian poet Robert Adamson[17] co-founded, with writer Michael Wilding, independent publishing company Paper Bark Press (sometimes spelt Paperbark[20]), which published Australian poetry. Wilding left the company in 1990, and Gemes and Adamson continued to run the company[21] until 2002.[20]

In 1997 Adamson and Gemes collaborated on the publication The Language of Oysters.[22]