Juno Gemes

Theatre

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 in the late 1960s and 1970s worked sporadically in London, 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]

Photography

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 more than 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]

Publishing

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]

In January 2025, Gemes published Until Justice Comes: Fifty Years of The Movement for Indigenous Rights. PHOTOGRAPHS 1970 - 2024, through Upswell Press.^[23]