The Baroque in 'Rydalmere vertical I-IV'

Since the 1980s, when Anne Ferran commenced her career as a photographer, her work has consistently focused upon the symbolic and historical presence of women.

In her 1997 series, ‘Longer than life’, the artist extended her project to consider the ‘servant’ class of women in the early colonial years of New South Wales. By photographing the interiors of historical buildings, in and around Sydney, she hoped to acknowledge the forgotten women who had once lived and worked in them.

For the four photographs in this exhibition ['Worlds within Worlds', 2026], Ferran concentrated in particular on a former female orphanage, which operated from 1818 to 1887, at Rydalmere.

Girls as young as two years of age were accepted by the orphanage – and here they received a basic education. At the age of 13, they were then placed as domestic servants in middle-class families.

For Ferran, the weathered architecture of the building became the arena for assembling groups of bonnets, which was a way to recall what was most absent in these historic buildings: the physical presence of the women who inhabited these interiors.

The simple head apparel, modelled on early nineteenth-century caps, stood in place of individual faces and bodies. These caps were designed to cover the head and shoulders and shade the face of women from humble circumstances, often servants, inmates of asylums, or orphans.

For this selection of images, the soft pleated forms are set in procession on wood covered with a rough black tarpaulin.

Each cap on its black support has a subtly different texture or patterning, as though denoting an individual sensibility. Shadows and folds replace an expected human identity.

Written and spoken by Jacinta Giles (Assistant Curator, International Art), March 2026