Pia de Bruyn - Female Trouble

Taking its title from John Waters’ cult classic, ‘Female Trouble ‘explores archetypal femininity through the lens of cinema.

Historically, film has portrayed women as damaged, deranged, or dangerous — particularly in sensationalist titles like ‘Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’, ‘The Female Butcher’, and ‘Girls on the Loose’. These narratives amplify stereotypes, shaping how femininity is constructed and consumed on screen.

Featuring wax pastel drawings, motorcycle jackets, studded gloves, and embellished helmets, ‘Female Trouble’ unfolds as a fictional mise en scène: a punk, queer, and political Female Film Club storms the cinema, intent on reclaiming the screen. This imagined takeover disrupts traditional filmic tropes, asking viewers to reconsider who gets to tell the story — and how.

‘Female Trouble’ invites audiences into a cinematic universe where female identity takes centre stage, camp aesthetics reign supreme, and the stereotypical portrayal of women in film is radically upended.

Pia de Bruyn brings this work to life as winner of the Bundoora Homestead Prize at the 2025 Midsumma and Australia Post Art Award.

This exhibition will be accompanied by a film screening of the cult classic ‘She Devil’s on Wheels’, a film which heavily influenced John Waters' ‘Female Trouble’, and a panel discussion with the artist Pia de Bruyn alongside filmmaker Fiona Hergstrom, writer and critic Brodie Lancaster and author and Senior Lecturer Screen Studies School of Culture and Communication (University of Melbourne), Dr Janice Loreck. Saturday 7 February, 5-7pm at Bundoora Homestead Art Centre.

Book in for the She Devils on Wheels screening here