Elise Allan

Brushed Aside is an interactive digital story that invites visitors to discover the women who shaped New Zealand’s art history. For generations, galleries, collectors and the school curriculum have overlooked female artists in Aotearoa, and with Art History set to leave NCEA in 2028, even that small point of contact is disappearing. Brushed Aside steps into the gap. Styled as an ongoing exhibition, it opens with Frances Hodgkins, one of the country’s earliest and most celebrated women painters. Visitors scroll sideways through her life and work in a playful, scrapbook-like world, where archival photographs shift into a bold blue tone and the story feels handmade, tactile and alive. Designed for female art students aged 16 to 18, it makes these artists easy to find, even without knowing their names. Each month, a new artist could open her own story.