Kiera Lindsey's "Wild Love: The Ambitions of Adelaide Ironside, the First Australian Artist to Astonish the World"

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, the historian Dr Kiera Lindsey chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Wild Love: The Ambitions of Adelaide Ironside, the First Australian Artist to Astonish the World. 

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• Adelaide Eliza Scott Ironside was a trailblazing Australian artist known for her passion, ambition and extraordinary talent. Born in Sydney in 1831, she challenged artistic boundaries by exploring themes such as identity, sexuality and spirituality


• Why Kiera Lindsey challenged the traditional narrative of Australian art history


• Why Adelaide Ironside’s story is still so relevant today


• How Kiera painstakingly pieced together tiny scraps of evidence from 19th-century historical records in which women were mostly invisible


• How following in Adelaide’s footsteps in colonial Sydney, London, Rome, Florence and Scotland from 200 years ago contributed to the narrative


• The limits Kiera placed on her imagination when speculating to fill gaps in the fragmentary historical record


• How Kiera portrayed the cultural norms, societal values and prevailing ideologies in which Adelaide successfully pursued her artistic ambitions


• How Kiera interpreted Adelaide’s romantic mysticism, which appeared in her poetry and paintings


• The art and craft of speculative biography, as well as its relevance and impacts.