One day in October of 2024, I saw a poster for a missing woman stuck to a pole in Smith Street, Collingwood.
“I hope she comes home safe – I don’t want to add her to my projects,” I said to my partner as we read her name and looked at her photo.
A month or so later, I was checking the police media sites. Drinking coffee and searching for murdered women and children has been my 5am ritual for more than a decade.
Victoria Police had just published a release about a woman’s body being found and two men being charged over her death.
That woman was Isla Bell. She was only 19.
Just weeks ago Isla’s family (I won’t say celebrated) recognised her 21st birthday.
The men charged over Isla’s death are 100% responsible for their actions – what I am about to say does not take away from this.
Isla, in her death and in her family’s darkest hours, was failed in many ways and by many people who knew better.
First came the journalists. The same media industry that refused to report that she was missing or to speak about her family’s determination to bring her home, decided to strip this young woman of any vestige of humanity.
They reduced her to a ‘body in a freezer’.
They wrote lies about her.
They trawled through her social media accounts to find photos that sexualised her.
They slut-shamed her.
They victim-blamed her.
Even today, more than a year later, they continue this without shame and without thought for Isla, her family, her friends, her community.
Politicians failed Isla. They didn’t attend her vigils. They didn’t attend rallies in her name. They made legal changes that mean the man accused of helping her alleged killer is now roaming our streets without an electronic tag.
The legal system failed her. They released one of the offenders on bail. That bail has not been revoked despite a key aspect being he wear an ankle monitor.
The same system that protects perpetrators’ rights is censoring Isla’s mum Justine – she’s been told to not talk about Isla’s murder case, to not say anything political. She is being gagged over her own child’s murder.
But there are people who refuse to let Isla’s story slip into the shadows, to be disregarded by politicians or misrepresented by the media.
These people are artists.
In the wake of Isla’s death, Melbourne’s art community came to the fore.
Tom Soar – a tattooist and street artist – created the stunning portrait of Isla that sits proudly on Justine’s social media and website. Tom also – with his brother – created a large graffiti tribute to Isla in Pakenham.
Other street artists created tributes across Melbourne – on trains, on trams, on walls, on fences they wrote her name with spraycans.
Brunswick locals knitted and crocheted banners with Isla’s name and wrapped them around trees and poles in the suburb where some of her family lives.
Perhaps the most poignant of all the artistic responses is the one that inspires this exhibition.
Someone sent me a DM about a group of young art students who decided to sacrifice their end of year show for Isla – a woman they’d not met. A woman to whom they owed nothing.
I was incredibly lucky to find out about this on its second last day – so I traversed the winding stairs at RMIT, not far from here and walked through all the gallery rooms.
Astounded at the simplicity of this movement and yet the power and emotion it conveyed.
I spoke to artists about their decision to turn their works from the viewer’s eyes.
They explained how they felt the heaviness of male violence in their own lives – some had experienced trauma, all knew survivors – all were fearful for the safety of themselves and those they loved.
They are angry that we live in a world where violent men are platformed, excused and allowed to thrive while we women hold our keys between our fingers when we walk the streets at night or where we can expect to be injured or killed in our own homes or workplaces by men we know.
Their response was not just for Isla – it was for all the women killed before her in 2024. As they painted the femicide toll number on the walls, they’d soon have to cross it out and add a new number because we were losing so many sisters so fast in that week.
Femicide is not inevitable – this is an epidemic that has a cure. And this cure does not sit with us women, even though we raise the money for refuges and other support services, even though we lobby MPs and policy-makers for funding and legislative change, even though we help get other women to safety, even though we organise the vigils and the rallies, even though we turn our paintings to the wall.
The cure for this epidemic sits squarely with men. Male violence is a man’s problem to solve.
We women are not men – we do not walk in their shoes, we do not experience the world the way they experience it, we do not have the same influence over men that they do.
Until men stop hurting us and killing us, we women will continue doing what must be done to keep our sisters safe.
And a big part of that is activism.
Without activism, we have no hope of highlighting and destroying the systemic issues that underpin femicide in Australia. Activism doesn’t have to be loud and in their face. Small activisms make the biggest difference. The woman who checks in on her neighbour after hearing her screaming the night before. The woman who hands money to a homeless sister, no questions asked. The woman who volunteers at the refuge.
The women who turn their paintings to the wall in a show of solidarity for a murdered sister, they’ve never met.
We cannot change Isla’s story, but her story will change the story for other women. And the students we are celebrating today are an essential part of that change.
REST IN POWER: A TRIBUTE TO A TRIBUTE IS AT QUEEN VICTORIA WOMEN’S CENTRE UNTIL DECEMBER 12, 2025
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