Maitland-based artists are doing their part for the cause by forming a feminist art group.

They have a new exhibition, titled Lily Briscoe and Friends.

Deborah Van Heekeren, curator of the exhibition, said Lily Briscoe was not a real person.

“She’s a minor character from Virginia Woolf’s most popular novel, To the Lighthouse,”  Van Heekeren said.

“In the novel, artist Lily Briscoe is told by a male character that ‘women can’t paint, women can’t write’, and this dismissive phrase echoes like a refrain throughout the book.”

Van Heekeren said the Lily Briscoe character was “a tribute to female creativity and tenacity”.

“Despite being told that it was impossible, Lily Briscoe continued to pursue a creative career and immersed herself in her painting,” she said.

The exhibition’s name was chosen to reflect some of the challenges faced by female artists.

“We’re all mature artists. We’ve all experienced certain kinds of sexism,” Van Heekeren said.

She said the aim of the group was “to support each other and create a network in Maitland for contemporary art”.

The group is committed to creating contemporary art that challenges gender stereotypes, blurs the line between the domestic and the mythological and looks for heroism in everyday experiences

The artists in the group are Sue and Sinead Cone, Paul Durell, Helen Hopcroft, Jenni Nichols, Alex Rennie, along with Van Heekeren.

The exhibition is being held at Brough House – a National Trust property in Maitland – from 10am to 3pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays until April 22.

Speaking of feminism, a University of Newcastle professor has been writing about women being “told to shut up”.

Professor of Classics Marguerite Johnson wrote on The Conversation website about Professor Mary Beard’s latest book, Women & Power: A Manifesto.

Professor Johnson said the book was “a short, sharp analysis of women in the West and their ongoing struggles for a voice in the public domain”.

“Beard chronicles some of the major obstacles women continue to face, framing her analysis through the lens of the legacies of ancient Greece and Rome.

“Beard provides some examples from antiquity to illustrate the social and gender dynamics inherited in the West. In short, she traces the long heritage of women being told to shut up.”

Examples of women being silenced go back to the “Homeric epics”.

She quotes Beard as writing: “Right where written evidence for Western culture starts, women’s voices are not being heard in the public sphere”.

“It may seem incredible that some 2500 years since the Homeric epics, women are still silenced in public,” the professor wrote.

She said the myths of ancient Greece remain relevant to “modern reality”.

She gives the example of Tony Abbott telling Ray Hadley on 2GB in 2017 that Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins should “pull her head in”.

“Pull your head in means, essentially, shut up and mind your own business.”