Exhibition celebrating 100 years of women’s football

An exhibition to celebrate 100 years of women’s football is now showing at the State Library of Western Australia.

Bounce Down: Women’s Australian Rules Football Centenary, is open every day until July 31, 2015 in the Ground Floor Gallery at the State Library in the Perth Cultural Centre, Northbridge.

The free exhibition explores the 100 year history of women’s Australian Rules football in Western Australia and beyond.

The earliest known competitive women’s game in Australia was played in Perth in 1915 as a war time fundraiser, with players dressed in silk dresses and hats, between teams from department store Foy and Gibson to help satisfy the public appetite for sport while so many men were away fighting on the battlefields of World War One.

Fast-forward 100 years and Australian Football is one of the fastest growing women’s sports in Western Australia with more than 33,500 participants making up 18% of total participation. In 2014 alone, female football in WA had a participation increase of 78%.

Off field, the State Library of Western Australia and the WA Women’s Football League is celebrating the history of women’s football in Australia with the Bounce Down exhibition.

The exhibition has been organised by freelance journalist, researcher and proud parent of female footballers, Brunette Lenkic. The exhibition features never before seen crowd-sourced memorabilia and newly acquired heritage items from the State Library of Western Australia collections.

Photographs, video footage, and a replica of the first women’s football uniform will help bring this little-known but important part of Australian sporting history to life and allow visitors to see the social and cultural history of the past century through the eyes of the players and the lenses of the media.

For further information contact: info@slwa.wa.gov.au or 9427 3111

Photo: Foy & Gibson women’s football team, 1917, 004998D, State Library of Western Australia pictorial collection