Then Now Next: On the March (RTRFM at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery)

It was during the days of protest that RTRFM was formed (then as 6UVS), and it was the women’s movement that helped inform the station’s early days of programming.

From Burning Down the House to Drastic on Plastic, RTRFM has been the home of women who love to kick up a stink, and been a key launch pad for women broadcasters and artists.

We interviewed Drastic on Plastic co-founders Lorraine Clifford and Jane Armstrong in 2021, who shared their recollections on this incredible era. Listen below (and hear their full interview here).

In May of 2021, RTRFM takes over the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery at UWA to highlight the amazing, trail-blazing and defiant women who have made the station—and WA music—what it is.

Since its founding in 1977, RTRFM has been hell-bent on helping blaze a trail for women within the industry. As an Artist in Residence at UWA’s Lawrence Wilson Gallery, we’ll continue to do just that with the audio-visual exhibit Then Now Next, featuring photos, stories and ephemera that reveal WA music’s untold feminist history.

Whether they were on the march, behind the mic, on the door, behind the bar, on the stage or behind the scenes, RTRFM will be paying tribute to the women who deserve to be up front and applauded.

Running from 11 May to 5 June 2021, Then Now Next will offer insights and stories from the past five decades, and hopefully inspire the next generation of women to keep ‘burning down the house’.

Image: Paper Dolls, 1979. Photograph by Rob Baxter