Karike Ashworth, Brave Girl: The Warrior, 2018, HD video, 7.02mins. Courtesy: The artist and the gallery.

Inspired by cosplay and comic strip characters, Karike Ashworth’s persona Brave Girl considers how, why and when labels like ‘brave’ get assigned to women, girls and to popular culture heroines.

In a parody of the running sequence from the 1994 Robert Zemeckis film,
Forrest Gump Brave Girl: The Warrior ‘documents’ Brave Girl’s journey through regional Queensland from Mount Glorious and Mooloolaba , via Esk, Kilcoy and Toogoolawah. Along her running tour, Brave Girl contemplates understood forms of courage and heroism, including masculine bravery, in her attempt to consider its feminine equivalents.

Karike Ashworth, Brave Girl: The Warrior, 2018, HD video, 7.02mins