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Audio description
3 minutes 41 seconds
The portrait is titled Social currency (Eva Cox). It was painted by Kim Spooner in 1999, with encaustic on canvas. The portrait measures 1.8 metres tall by 1.6 metres wide and is unframed.
Eva is painted realistically. The colours are blended, smudging together, the shading making Eva appear rounded and three dimensional. The encaustic media creates a smooth waxy effect.
Eva’s smiling face takes up most of the canvas. She is cropped at her shoulders on either side and just below her shoulders at the bottom edge. Only a small amount of dark deep blue and rust-brown background is visible behind her.
Eva’s head is on a slight angle turned towards the right, her eyes looking towards the viewer. Her hair is parted at the side and tied back, with a small section at the front curving around her forehead then down, following the shape of and finishing at her cheekbone. The rest of her hair is longer, the gentle waves flowing over the tops of her ears and drawn back loosely. Her hair is painted in golds and deeper bronzes, merging together and highlighted, where touched by the light, in silvery white.
Eva’s skin is a similar palette of silvery white, gold and grey-blues combining delicately in a silky glowing surface.
Eva has a smooth forehead interrupted by a fine vertical line between her eyebrows. Her eyebrows are dark, slender and partially covered by the oval frames of her glasses. From behind the lenses and beneath heavy lids, Eva’s eyes look directly towards us. Her irises are a golden amber with flecks of light making them sparkle. Under her eyes, soft folds of skin sit in half-moons.
Eva has a long, narrow nose with a turned-down tip. The bridge of her glasses rests up high on her nose while the bottom edge of their frames seems to press heavily on her cheeks, forming an indent where they rest on the soft skin.
Eva’s cheeks are rounded and firm at the top. Beneath, are small lines and dimples created by her broad grin. A deep crease runs beneath each cheek from the outer edges of her nose to the corners of her mouth.
Eva’s mouth is smiling in a wide closed smile. Her lips are shapely, the top thinner than her full bottom lip. Her lips are glossy and a warm coppery-brown.
Eva’s round chin is echoed by a second fold of skin framed by the upturned collar of her jacket. The jacket looks soft, made from thick plaid fabric, warm blue with a grid of black-edged pink-red stripes. The edge of the collar sits up and close to Eva’s jaw, the top buttons undone, creating a small ‘v’ at her neck. She wears a dark grey roll-necked top beneath.
Audio description written and read by Lucinda Shawcross
The Gallery’s Acknowledgement of Country, and information on culturally sensitive and restricted content and the use of historic language in the collection can be found here.
encaustic on canvas (support: 180.0 cm x 160.0 cm)
Eva Cox AO (b. 1938), academic, feminist and social activist, emigrated to Australia in 1948 after her Jewish family had reunited following separation during the war. As a student at the University of Sydney she became active in politics and social issues. In 1972, a single parent, she enrolled at the University of NSW, where she became deeply involved in feminism and one of the early members of the Women’s Electoral Lobby. She was a vociferous spokesperson on a range of social issues including superannuation, childcare and social security. From 1977 to 1981 she directed the New South Wales Council for Social Services; later, having held a number of advisory and public service positions, she helped to found the Women's Economic Think Tank. From 1994 to 2007 she was the senior lecturer and program director in social inquiry at the University of Technology, Sydney, and since 2007 has been a professorial fellow at Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at UTS. Cox is a regular contributor to social justice, social policy and political forums across a range of media.
Known for using traditional mediums, Kim Spooner painted this portrait of Cox using encaustic, which involves adding coloured pigments to heated wax. This technique gives a three-dimensional effect, adding depth and character to the face. Spooner was awarded the 1999 Portia Geach Memorial Prize for this work.
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