Passion, guts and handbags

VINTAGE handbags have almost certainly been exhibited at the Arts Centre before, but the one belonging to musician Clare Moore has a very different heritage to the type usually associated with galleries. Moore's handbag features in the new exhibition Rock Chicks, and dates back to the early 1980s when she was the drummer with post-punk outfit the Moodists. When the Moodists moved to London, shortly after Nick Cave's band the Boys Next Door, Moore used the handbag to carry the band's takings, strapping it to her ankle while she drummed. It's just one of 300 artefacts lent by artists for the exhibition, which will also feature clothes, instruments and hundreds of photographs of Australian female performers dating from the 1950s. Advertisement: Story continues below ''The artists involved have been so wonderful, lending us items and suggesting other artists we should talk to,'' explains the exhibition's lead curator, Janine Barrand. Continuing the Arts Centre's Icon series - which has previously celebrated the lives of Nick Cave, Peter Allen, AC/DC, Kylie Minogue and Dame Edna Everage - Rock Chicks aims to tell the story of Australia's female songwriters, instrumentalists and singers. ''It's such an enormous story about these women who had sort of become invisible, written out of history,'' says Barrand. ''I felt it was one of the great untold performing arts stories.'' Research - by four curators - began more than a year ago, and Barrand says they hadn't realised the breadth of the rock chick story. ''The focus is really from the advent of rock'n'roll, but also looking at the archaeology - what women were doing before rock'n'roll, in jazz bands, as band leaders, on vaudeville stages,'' she says. ''It's about the spirit of rock chickdom - the passion, the guts and getting a sense about Australian rock chicks.'' The exhibitions follows the stories of women from all musical genres, including Little Pattie, Marcie Jones and Margret RoadKnight, through to current stars, such as Missy Higgins and Katy Steele. Photographs of live performances include girl groups such as Marcie Jones and the Cookies, '80s rock band Girl Monstar, the Go-Betweens' Lindy Morrison, Renee Geyer, Marcia Hines, Rebecca Barnard and dozens of others. ''In the early 1960s the folk and jazz then moved into prog rock and hard rock, and artists like Carol Lloyd and Margret RoadKnight were doing these important things in the 1960s and early '70s that were quite challenging given the times they were operating in,'' says Barrand. ''They set the scene for what other women were able to achieve when pub rock hit - when women moved into those tougher venues - you had to be loud and gutsy to perform in pub venues.'' Enter Chrissy Amphlett, former lead singer of the Divinyls, photographs of whom feature heavily in the exhibition.