Practice Viva Questions

Introductory Context

What is the area in which you wish to be examined?

Stitching (In)Significant Women - samplers, supporting artwork and essay

In what way is your thesis original?

It explores how specific, named, previously unstudied women, have been identified as significant by their actions, by people who knew them. It uses the sampler as a textile art medium to make social observations about women as a group who are under-represented as subjects and makers in museums and art galleries.

What are the theoretical underpinnings of your work?

My work uses various feminist theories - standpoint theory; epistemic injustice - and value theories: Kohlberg's theory of moral development and Schwartz's theory of basic values.

Who, or what, was most influential on your thinking?

Haraway & Hartsock - standpoint theory; knowledge is socially situated; minorities see 'some things from somewhere'
Arden McHugh - epistemic injustice - universal values are actually masculinist
Irigaray - women's values have not yet been clearly defined
Donald Schon - Reflective Practitioner
Richard Sennett - The Craftsman
Visiting the NPG for the rehang of the 20thC gallery

Visiting the National Portrait Gallery in 2018 for the rehang of the 20th century gallery, showed me how skewed is the representation of anyone other than white men, and how restricted are the media they display - mostly oil on canvas.  Reading their Collections Policy showed me how fine words in a policy recognising they have an over-representation of oil on canvas, does not necessarily transfer into changing the curatorial practice, which is usually rationalised/justified via 'we have inadequate funding'. This challenged me to consider how I could redress the representation of women with my contemporary work, using the sampler as a largely female art media.

Which previous studies and researchers influenced your work?

The Value theories of Kohlberg and Schwartz.  Kohlberg said men's values were around Justice and Women's around Caring, and measured them in a hierarchical structure. Theory devised and trialled on men, then applied to women - who always scored less than men.  I believed his theory was fundamentally flawed.  Schwartz created a 360 degree structure with a diverse range of values held by men and women.  But neither theory accounted why women are represented, by the media in general and institutions in particular, with a narrow range of reasons (sexuality, domesticity, passivity) to be valued in 21st century society.

Why did you narrow your focus of enquiry to this?

Because my life experience and work experience showed that women are always valued less than men for what they do, even when in the same job.  Women in my diverse, manual workplace were rarely valued for their skills and contributions that were relevant to the workplace.  Laddish behaviour was valued, especially from men.

Explain your thesis, in two minutes

My thesis considers history of the sampler as a vehicle to demonstrate skills for middle class and working class girls.  I consider how women have been portrayed in art history as demonstrated by museums and galleries, and which groups of women are unrepresented. I reflect on Elaine Reichek for her samplers that describe the stereotyping of her Jewish family; Mary Kelly for her depiction of the unsavoury reality of motherhood via baby nappies; Margaret Harrison for her challenge of Government perpetration of unfair employment conditions for women, and Lubaina Himid for promoting the skills of a black laundress from history.   I use the sampler to carry a narrative of working class women, known to me, whose skills are largely unrecognised, and conclude that women's values centre around verbal and practical skills, kindness and work ethic.

How did you maintain objectivity during the research process?

I'm not sure I did. This is an art MRes, based on social observations from my position as a straight, white, working class, middle aged woman. There is a feminist phrase 'objectivity is male subjectivity', and my work portrays 'some things from somewhere'.  My work depicts activities conducted by specific, unrecognised women who I believe make a valid and valuable contribution to society by their mundane and consistent actions.  The research was based on oral history interviews, records in archives and contextual research in museums and galleries.  My work portrays social observations about women, by women, for women.

How far do you think you can generalise your work?

The principles of considering who is under-valued can be applied to many walks of life.  I am working to consider women - any type of woman - different ages, ethnicities, orientations.  But these principles can be applied to anyone, for example lorry drivers are often under-valued when overtaking on a two lane motorway because they slow the traffic, but if there is an accident, these drivers know what to do and use their vehicles to create safe space for emergency services.

The generalisation of my work is displayed when it is on display at exhibitions.  Feedback from curatorial staff indicates my samplers inspire a lot of discussion from women, around the skills in the making and associating skills and talents in the women I depict with memories of women in the viewer's life.  This generalisation and association is my critical success factor.

How did your research questions emerge?

??

What are the motivations for your research?

The first motivation was my workplace - women were not valued in the same way as men; many women worked really hard and were ignored for their contribution, whereas many men were rewarded for who they socialised with (I ran the payroll and could see who was rewarded for supposed high performance!).

Then I looked at the National Gallery rehang, and realised men were represented by war-mongering; power; status; whereas the few women shown were sexualised, passive, or domestic, and the only painting of an ethnic minority woman was not even finished! While there were possibly restrictions on what was displayed because of historical collecting practices, imaginative curation could have diversified the display.  And the only exhibits brought in on loan for the rehang, were cigarette cards. They were absolutely exquisite but it occurred to me that WW1 cigarette cards were a male media - there were no media related to women.

My contribution to the under-representation of women in institutional art collections, is to make my own art, in a female media, that celebrates the contributions of women who have little power or status, but who are valued in mundane ways.

Methods, Design and Analysis

Why did you select this sample?  Were there any limitations to it?

This sample was selected as women known to me.  Limited by working class status, all with links to the East End of London.

How did you choose your methodology?  Were there any constraints?

I used a multi-modal methodology, which varied according to where I thought I would find relevant data.  Because I chose each woman represented, I wanted to take wider views and opinions about why the individual should be valued.  The first sampler, Intellectual Woman, Mrs Konieczny, commenced with oral history recordings with her daughter which gave some key quotes.  Argumentative Woman, about me,  used a questionnaire to gain views from my friends and family about my helpful and unhelpful behaviours and sketchbooks to develop ideas. Homemaker Woman, Aunt Joan, used oral history interviews with her children, visits to gardens that inspired her; and sketchbooks to develop ideas about artefacts that she used. Migrant Worker Woman, toilet cleaners at Liverpool Street station, used interviews with Gifti, Mavis and Sarpong, and sketchbooks to develop ideas about their artefacts.  Manual Worker Woman, Aunt Daisy, used archive research, and sketchbook development.  Much of the sketchbook work involved working with tools and substrates that represented the individuals chosen - for example drawing with identity cards, dressmakers wheel and stitch, or working on dressmaking patterns, key fobs, car seat templates or toilet rolls.

Talk us though how you analysed your data

I usually read through data gathered and start creating sketchbooks inspired by those phrases.  In the case of my Argumentative Woman piece, I took the database created by the questionnaire about me, and identified patterns and trends in what was valued, or was deemed unhelpful.  There was a strong correlation between what I say that is supportive, or what I say that can be unkind or cutting.  I realised that sometimes the same statement that is deemed both supportive and cutting, but by different parties.  I identified that this is often a key factor in being deemed argumentative - when supporting someone being treated unfairly, my words are deemed helpful by the underdog and unhelpful by the person I am arguing against.

How did you manage the data you collected?

Mostly by restricting how much I gathered.  In the early stages of research, I made the mistake of thinking that data had to be on a database, so did some quantitative research about how women were represented in museums.  This gave me a lot of data which indicated I had set the parameters too wide.  But it did give some broad base conclusions that women were poorly represented in general collections, and tended to be represented as passive, sexualised or domestic.  Occasionally women were represented as successful in a male dominated field eg science or engineering.

Interviews were recorded, with required consents, and written transcripts are available, with destroy dates.  Archival visits are documented.

Did you encounter any problems with applying your chosen method of analysis?

No.

What were the ethical issues in conducting this research?

Consent from individuals to use the data gathered for artwork.  Permission was sought and granted to use their names. This was resolved by stating they would be consulted regularly with the outputs of my making, and that they had the right to withdraw consent, so I would stop work.  If I failed to ensure they were represented fairly, my university would fail me on my degree.

What steps have you taken to minimise researcher bias in your work?

I think with artwork, some researcher bias is inevitable, because my work is based on selecting people who I believe were worthwhile and contributed positively to their family and society in under-noticed ways.  However, what I have represented has come from sources within their own families or archives.

If you could start again what would you do differently?

Have a better plan at the start.  Don't fall into the trap of masculinist thinking - I chose Mrs Konieczny as she was an intellectual woman whose upbringing prevented her from using her intellect to earn her living.  I made the mistake of following Enlightenment thinking that separated mind from body, and valued mind over body.  So I started by valuing her intellect but the research found her contribution valued by her family was her interaction and kindness with people who were struggling.

If you could start again what would you do the same way?

The sketchbook developments.  I enjoy the artwork and how it makes me consider what people do.
I'd continue using the long narrow shape, the alphabets and the text panel of the samplers.  The shape alludes to the purpose of the sampler cut from a bolt of cloth to develop skills; the alphabet to enable working class girls to mark linens; the verse to show they could read.  The border pattern to indicate something significant about the individual: the national flowers of England and Poland for Mrs Konieczny; honesty for me; the single colour flower borders for Aunt Joan; the Ghanaian symbols for Gifts, Mavis and Sarpong; and the production line of car seats for Aunt Daisy.

How did you decide what literature to include in your literature review?

As an artist, I'm deeming artwork to be the literature.  Elaine Reichek uses samplers as a artefact of her colonial childhood and subversively uses it as in indicator of a comfortable home life, to narrate the casual racism her family encountered. I love Mary Kelly's use of soiled nappies to tell the complicated, unsavoury mundanity of motherhood, challenging the sweet-scented idealisation given by the patriarchal society.  Margaret Harrison, with her collaged Homeworkers, appeals to my feminist knowledge of employment law and the practices companies use to circumvent their legal responsibilities. And Lubaina Himid draws attention to Grace Robinson, a black laundress, hidden in the history of Knole, National Trust property, thus broadening the range of people studied in British history.

Results and discussion

Do you think the data collected were the most appropriate to answer your research question?

My initial practices to create a database of information about formal portraits was not, but was broadly useful as I identified the need to tighten the criteria on which I gathered data.  It identified that formal portraits in institutions were very restricted in range - to people  with status, power and money (usually men, but sometimes women associated with such men).  Thus I identified that ordinary, working class women were under-represented.

What are the weakest parts of your work?

My writing.  My inability to accept that I need to write a lot and refine continually to achieve one decent paragraph.  (I accept that I can make several things in an art class, and only one image will be high quality.  I accept that I have to create the less successful, in order to get into flow to create the good stuff.  I wish I could do the same with my writing!!). I find the writing really difficult.  Yet I recognise that all the angst leads to me drawing articulate conclusions about my subject - Margaret Harrison's Homeworkers is brilliant  - because she publicises that the Government that introduced employment and H&S legislation subsequently becomes a perpetrator of discrimination against women by contracting out its low-grade female employees work to contractors, thus depriving its lowest paid staff of safe working environments, holiday and sick pay, and guaranteed salaried income.

In Migrant Woman Worker, the shaping on the toilet brush handles should have been done in a different stitch to get the flowing shapes.  Also, I should have stitched all the toilet brushes in black (not various of grey, and definitely not the blue grey), to simplify the design and restrict the range of colours to red, green, gold and black - the colours of the Ghanaian flag.

What are the strongest parts of your work?

The people I choose to consider. Very few people even thank toilet cleaners for their work, let alone make art about them.

What aspect of your research did you find most interesting?

The contextual stuff.  I am always going to museums and galleries, and thinking 'how do they represent women here?  Which women do they represent?  As what?"

How did your thinking develop as you went through the research process?

I started by thinking that women should be valued in the same way as men.  But as I looked at how art institutions represented men - power, status, money - I realised this was not my value system.  And women are not men.  We do different things and value systems are often unspoken, and masculinist - ie created and controlled originally by men, and retrofitted to women.   Women's values are not clearly defined, but I think they are different to men's.

While considering which women to represent, I considered my former headmistress, who was an intellectual, champion swimmer, multi-faith champion, Kew Garden volunteer. And she was middle class.  But she had received an OBE, so had received considerable recognition.  I refined my focus to look at women who had not received any form of formal recognition.

How have you evaluated your work?

I find my work is validated by whether it is selected for exhibition - which is has been.  If other people look at my work and start identifying and discussing the significant women in their lives, then it is a success.

Which part of the process did you enjoy the most?  Why?

Developing sketchbooks that tell a narrative of specific women.  I like using mundane materials.  I like the humour of using unconventional media when making wry observations about how women are treated.  When I was working on Manual Worker Woman, I realised the first jobs that were contracted out by Ford Motor Co were the machinists.  Ford had used the women's skills and as soon as the women successfully campaigned for higher wages (still the lowest paid in the company), they had been discarded - thus Ford had treated them like abject commodities.  So I drew payslips on Izal toilet paper - an abject media, designed to be used and discarded.  I thought this was quite witty!  If sad.

Where did you go wrong?  What did you learn from it?

On the toilet brush handles - the curves were not elegant enough.  I used the wrong stitch.  So I learned a different stitch to apply smooth curves to the car seats on Manual Worker Woman.

I used too many shades of grey on the toilet brushes, especially the blue grey.  I should have used black on all of them.  I learned to simplify designs as I went along, not make them more complicated.

How long do you expect your work to remain current?

It's art.  It can remain current for a long time. So long as my work provokes thought in others, I'm not particularly bothered whether it is current.

Please describe your main findings in a few sentences

Women's values, as identified in my tiny selection, seem to be around verbal and practical skills, kindness, and work ethic.  Also viewers appear to like looking at artwork that kindly represents them, or people they know.

How do your findings challenge the literature in this field?

By portraying different people to those frequently shown in galleries and museums, using infrequently used media.

How do your findings support the literature in this field?

I am treading a well-worn feminist tranche by making art about women and their life experiences.  Miriam Schapiro, Judy Chicago, Barbara Kruger, Monica Ross, Shelly Goldsmith, Caren Garfen

Implications and utilisation

How do you intend to share your research findings?

By offering the samplers for long term loan to the East End Women's Museum (opening in Barking & Dagenham 2021) to inspire their outreach programme.
By exhibiting the samplers and supporting artwork in Women's History Month events
By talks to women's organisations eg WI.

How has your work been received so far?  eg conference, publications, blogs (art shows)

At art shows, my samplers inspire much inspection by stitchers and affectionate reminiscence of the significant women in the lives of the viewer.  They trigger memory.

How would you like this research to be followed up and taken further?

By outreach programmes inspiring other women to make art about their (In)Significant Women, and realise the contributions of other unknown women.

Is there anything you'd like to share or discuss that we've not asked you about?

No.

What are the research implications of your findings?

That museums and galleries review their collecting and exhibiting policies, and diversify how they show/represent people.  For example, the National Portrait Gallery's collections policy states they collect images of significant people, and are aware they are over-represented with oil on canvas and white men.  Their means of addressing this was to have a wonderful exhibition of Grayson Perry using ceramics, tapestry, miniatures, of many types of people not in the NPG. But no exhibitions of diverse media since!  I would challenge their definition of 'significant' - they refer to people who have been high achievers in the fields of engineering, medicine, politics, sport, music, which I think are masculinist values.  I'd like 'significant' to include nurses who conduct smear tests, renal nurses, laundry workers, dustmen, miners etc.

Who is your audience?

Mostly women but anyone who is prepared to look at people who are different to them.

What are the practice implications of your findings?

Not sure.

What are the theoretical implications of your findings?

That women are usually deemed as lesser than men in any measurement or value system;  that more research could identify in more detail, the patterns and trends of what women value, what onlookers value women for, and how society could be more gender fair.

What are the policy implications of your findings?

That museums and galleries need to write policies relating to the representation of people more widely, and apply them.  To find alternative sources of imagery.  Consider borrowing works rather than purchasing them.  To display more contemporary art.

What are you most proud of, and why?

Migrant Worker Woman.  Gifti, Mavis and Sarpong are good, hard-working women who serve the travelling public.  I love the colours, I love the mundane objects depicted.  I hope that in some tiny way, my work makes them feel more valued and that people who look at my sampler see toilet cleaners in a more positive light.

Artist-led Research Seminar at Foundling Museum

Notes courtesy of Vanda Campbell, artist and teacher. 

FOUNDLING MUSEUM 7.6.19 

@ artquest London @foundlingmuseum Research-led practice.   

Foundling request. Did not want proposals with fixed outcome.  Want artist to challenge the museum’s expectations and collections.  Want artist to explore – have a sense of curiosity.   

Horniman request – artist needs empathy with museum’s objectives/values.  Interested in others looking to re-think their practice. Preferred participatory practices (with visitors, staff).   

Battersea Arts Centre – scratch process – Scratch = encourage artist to share work at early stage, when questions have not been resolved.  
-      Want artist and museum to be collaborators.  
-      The artist is expert in  making; museum is expert in audience and collection.  
-      Gives more opportunity to take risks when focus is on work in progress.  
-      Look for makers\artists who are risk takers: working with communities and focus on social change are important.
-      BAC have Inspiration Day callouts £100 attendance fee paid to participants for development day.  

Key phrase = where art meets society, but switch the priority – where society meets art.   

Clare Twomey – describes herself as an artist who wants to grow.  Does not want to go and do what she already knows.  Welcomes the opportunity to pivot.   

Dr Jane Wildgoose believes that ‘emotional resonance of charge remains in objects’.  

Hannah – think of the legacy of your work.  What is it there for?  What impact (long-term) will it have?  You might not know at the outset but be open and positive that it will.  How can the work that comes next be informed by what has just happened?   

Museum object cataloguing – who is doing the cataloguing?  Is there only one story an object has to tell? 

Anecdotal evidence from attendees that submissions to art exhibitions are more likely to be selected if 3 entries are made, rather than one.  Don’t ever submit just one entry if you can’t afford the entry for three, because the single submission never gets picked.

People to invite to exhibition

Maurice, Juliet, Ian
Friends of the Shedio people
Dad's family - David, Shirley and grandchildren, Aunt Doreen, cousins Barbara, Marion, Elizabeth, Grace; Allison and Neil;
Mum's family - Cousins Angie, Christine, Sue, Barbie, Gill
Mary Schoeser, Kate W, Eileen W

Coventry Uni - Jill, Imogen, examiners Kollette Super, David Vaughan, Darren, Carol & Jen
London Met - Linden, Lewis
Herts - Lisa, Antje, Flea, Caroline Bartlett
City Lit - Louise Baldwin; Ian Tucknott
Anglia - Tina Kendall

East End Women's Museum - Louise ..., Fani
Eastside Community Heritage - Judith Garfield
WI - Aunt Joan's WI, central London WI?

Cycling - Braintree Easy Riders - not sure but will put it out there

Swimming  - Sharon Cromie and Becky, Pat Engels

LUL - Esther, Erica, Pat, Denise

School - Anita, Lindsey, Sharon,

Measurements of RAWLabs mezzanine gallery

Height of walls - 2.40m

_______________  ___  ___________  ___  _________________  ___  ____________
  320cm                 30cm    260cm.        30cm      330cm.                 30cm.   260cm
                             plugs                         plugs                                   plugs
|                                                                                                                                            |
|                                                                                                                                            | 160cm
| 2.40m                                                                                                                                _|
|                                                                                                                                          |_    50cm
________                                                                                                                             |                    
top of stairs |                                                                                                                        |
                   |                                                                                                                         | 400cm
                   |                                                                                                                         |
                   |                                                                                                                         |
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Claudette Johnson at Modern Art Oxford

Great day out.  I love portraiture. This time the images were large - typically 4 feet by 5 feet.  Johnson draws on a wall as they are so large, so she has the model behind her, and keeps turning to and fro to look and draw.  She allows the model considerable freedom to choose the pose.  I find it amazing that she can draw so much larger than life and get the expressions of the models.  No bland imagery here!

Sketchbook drawings 2018-19.  Pastel, gouache and paint on paper.
Johnson uses sketchbook exercises as warm-up for larger scale drawings.

Standing Woman.
"I'm not interested in portraiture or the tradition.
 I'm interested in giving  space to black woman presence.
A presence which has been hidden, distorted and denied.
I'm interested in our humanity, our feelings, and our politics.
Some things which have been neglected.
Claudette Johnson

Seated figure, pastel and gouache on paper.

Reclining figure, pastel and gouache on paper.

Figure with figurine.  Acrylic, gouache and pastel on paper.
Johnson is trying to understand her relationship with African figures
through their appropriation by early 20th century European artists
and later circulation in art history.

More Than Muses - module 3 - movers and shakers

Week 1  Double Standards.

Katy Hessel - Victoria Miro Gallery.  Instagram account @thegreatwomenartists.

Alice Neel.  Linda & Daisy 1973. Under-representation of women in art.  Women often gained recognition at end of life or at death.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) Women are present but written out of or forgotten by history.

Anguissola.  Supported by father - who had 6 daughters before his first son.  Self portrait with Bernardina Compi (her art tutor).  She makes herself 1.5 times bigger.  And he's the one putting in the details on her dress - ie the role normally given to the assistant.

Levina Teerlin. c1510-1576.  Minaturist. Took over from Holbein - and was paid more!


Clara Peeters.  Presence of artist.  Self reflected in goblets.  Cannot be wrongly attributed!

Gentileschi (1593-1653) Dramatic.  Women exacting revenge

Elizabetta Sironi.  Plain living and high thinking.  1638-1665

Judith Leyster 1609-1669

Angelica Kauffman 1741-1807

Katsushiki Oi (Hokusai's daughter) 1800-66

Edmonia Lewis 1800-1866.  African American scuptress.  Sculpted abolitionists.

Margaret Macdonald1865-1933 and Frances MacDonald.  Inspired Klimt.  1st women students at GSA.    Evolved their own decorative interior design style.  Glasgow school.  MM did not work after 1921.

Berthe Morisot.  Painting en plein air.  Swift brush strokes.  Tender and melancholic.  French middle class work.

Hilma of Klimt.  1862-1944.  Rarely exhibited.  World not ready for them.  No show for 20 years.  Kept to self.

Hannah Hock 1889-1978.  Dada.  Artmaking opposed to WW1.  Ignored females - object  not muse.  Spliced newsprint for political satire. Supported birth control and suffrage. Stood up to commercial exploitation of clothing.

Barones Elsa con Freytag Loringhoven.  (Duchamps Fountain was originally hers!  She wrote a letter to him about it and signed it R Mutt! Recently this letter was found).

Gertrude Abercrombie 1909-77.  Surrealist.  Career from 1932-71.  Empty stillness and silence. Dream states.

Hannah Ryggen.  1894?  1909-77.  Weaver.  Used own wool from sheep.

Lee Miller.  Surrealist photographer.  Raped as a child - ended up with gonnoreah.  Posed nude for father.  Independent.  Modelled for Vogue - Man Ray.  In Paris - solarisation experiments.  NY photo studio.  Angrogenous name -helped career.  War photos.

Ruth Asawa.  1926-2013.  Black Mountain College.  Sculpture - woven wire.  Economy of line.  Mother of 6.  Advocated free art education.

Lee Krasner.  1908-1984.  Jackson Pollock's wife.  NY.  Women's Art School.  Her art stronger than his but gets overpowered by his persona.

Alice Neel.  Dramatic black outlines, pale background, scars.  Real pregnancy images.  Awkward and transitioning bodies.  Devoted to her style of painting.

Judy Chicago.  Iconic work 1974-79.

Guerrilla Girls. 1985-date.

Lubaina Himid.  British Black Art Movement.

US Museum art collections by gender. 83% men, 85% white.



Art's Double Standards.  Katy Tarbard

Morality, philosophy, good and bad.  Can we separate the life of the artist from their work?  Look at the narrative and appeal of heir work.  Art history has always celebrated the bad boys.  Different ways of judging male and female artists, and how they raise their children.

Sam Taylor Wood, and Alan Johnson.  She was in her late 40s and he was a teenager when they had a relationship.  She was a YBA, nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997, yet if you put her into Google, images of her and her boyfriend appear, not of her and her work.   Women still get over-sexualised.

Morality in Art.  Damien Hirst - dating younger girl - Google brings up him and his work.

Hepworth and Ben Nicholson.  Triplets.  Both parents were artists.  Farmed them out to nurseries and then boarding school.  Her guilt came out in her art.  Nothing about the impact on him.  Emotion?  Old fashioned parenting - no attachment from men.  Over-egged?  Nourished by rich life - even when she could only work at the art half an hour a day, she was thinking about it all the time.  Hepworth voiced her frustrations.

Lucien Freud.  14 children.  Less acceptable?

Turner - many unacknowledged children.  Creative visionary genius?  Ruskin (Turner's big supporter) burned much of Turner's sketchbook heritage - on the grounds it was porn - many drawings of female pudenda - Ruskin deemed them 'inexcusable'.  Victorian morals.

Genius deemed to be morally good?  But the myth of the artistic genius reverses this idea?

Michelle Hartney.  Own Art History labels.  How to write contemporary art history labels.  Ignore the genius without ignoring the consequences of their genius.

Faith Ringgold at Serpentine Gallery 7/6/19

Amazing show.  I love political work that shows a narrative from someone's ordinary life.

American people series.

Faith Ringgold, 1964, A Man Kissing His Wife, oil on masonite

Interestingly, on my phone camera, the face recognition only worked on the white face in this image. In other photos, black faces were recognised by the camera, but only if there were two obvious eyes. White faces were recognised in profile when only one eye showed.  Does this indicate it is a white person who programmed the face recognition?

Faith Ringgold, 1964, The American Dream, oil on canvas 

Faith Ringgold, 1964, Mr Charlie, oil on canvas

Faith Ringgold, 1967, US Postage Stamp commemorating the  advent of Black Power, oil on canvas

Faith Ringgold, 1963, They Speak No Evil, oil on canvas 

Faith Ringgold, 1966, The Artist and his Model, oil on canvas 

Faith Ringgold, United States of Attica

Faith Ringgold, 1997, We Came to America, acrylic on canvas

Faith Ringgold, reading Tar Beach to schoolchildren.

Faith Ringgold, 1997, The Flag is Bleeding #2,
acrylic on canvas, with painted and pieced border.

Faith Ringgold and curator reviewing children's work.

Faith Ringgold at Conway Hall 6/6/19

Faith Ringgold's exhibition at Serpentine Gallery opens today 6/6/19.

Her beginnings.  Young children love art - they practice and do art.  Often they keep at it until 12/13, then give up because they are not encouraged.  Not seen as proper work/education.  Becoming an artist is a real challenge.  Doing leads too Being.

Harlem was an extended family and was very protective.  She was born in 1930.  She knew ordinary people, normal people who were unknown artists who became well known.  But they were just ordinary people.  John Hendricks, Jean Toche.  Recognition of black people.  Not many went to college but the feeling of the time was that 'going to college' meant you could be something.

There was no degree in art for itself at that time, but she could get a degree in order to teach art.  It was a boys school, the city college.  She could only go to the city college in order to become a teacher, because she was a girl.  She could major in art, and minor in teaching, to get her place.  Interesting that teaching was not deemed to be a major endeavour!

Enriching, interesting and wonderful.  Enjoys meeting other artists who have gone before her.

American People Series 1963.  Martha's Vineyard.  Her experience - black peole were not to paint white people, but it was ok for whites to paint blacks.  Postage stamp is her version of Picasso's Geurnica.

There were spontaneous riots in the USA at this time - but not put on tv.  Hale Woodruffe insulted her work - work has no rhythm. (Since when did black people not have rhythm!)  She did it her way.  Showed her rhythm. Huge abstracts were in vogue - her work was huge and figurative.  Her work is now shown in MOMA.  Her Geurnica is the most visited artwork in the show.

'Black' as a word was feared by black people.  Then Black Power in 1966 changed all that.

She moved into activism in late 60s/70s.  Political art is art.  It is not to be thrown away or despised.  Something to think about.  Freedom and how important it is.  United States of Artica - stats of dreadful things.

Protested at the Whitney (when?  30 years ago?) - demanding women artists to be displayed.  The Biennale showed few women, and very few black women.  Decided to ask for %.  Michele (who?) - very young black artists suggested 50%, which they put on their placards.  This resulted in 23% women's images being selected (but only 2% black women).  This year 50% women shown.

Story Quilts.

Constantly told 'not your story'.  But it is the story of those around her.  Publish 'my' book her way.  Growing up in Harlem was good - her stories are not misery literature.  Wrote it on her art.  Freedom of speech on her quilts.  Took 15 years to get published.  Bullfinch Press published it first.  Then Duke University Press.  Writing over her art helped get published.  Has written many childrens' books.  Tar Beach comes from the script on a quilt.

Metro art.  Her work is on the NY Metro at a couple of stations.  She needed to appear with the imagery before people took notice.  It's not about the idea, but you need to show what it is.

Work hard.  Don't change what you do.  Don't try to please others.  Please yourself with your art.  That's the key.  You will be successful at that, rather than following someone else's ideas/instructions.

Why quilts - black slaves were allowed to make quilts as they could keep the master warm!  One art form can turn into another.

Great evening.  Very interesting to see who was in the audience.  Young black men and women; middle aged black women, and elderly white women (quilters).  VERY enthusiastic response from audience.  Very important that she had told the political narrative of black people.   Really showed the need for non-mainstream narratives in art.   Fantastic evening.

Lubaina Himid, Desert Island Discs

2/6/19.

Her work is about black identity, creativity, politics and the people of African diaspora themes.  Make visible narratives that otherwise go unrecorded.

I need to be able to see myself.  We need to feel we belong in those shared spaces.  Telling stories of the black experiences that are everyday and extraordinary, are what I'm here to do.  Listen to people, families, past, books.

Audience is central - works needs an audience like a theatre does (she's a former theatre set designer).

People bring their own stories into the art gallery space.  Many sets of stories collide in the room, using the work like a conversation piece.    The world would be a better place if people, especially men, listened to women.

Black Women - we are just ordinary - not sexy, dangerous, or heroic or tragic.

Department stores and museums (invented at the same time)  - we perambulate through beautifully lit spaces.  In museums everything belongs to us, but you can't touch it.  In department stores nothing belongs to you until you buy it, but you can touch everything.  This influences the taking in of culture.

In the 1980s Himid had to argue there was such a thing as a black artist.  Himid was told black people don't make art.

Black people were seen on the street or in hospitals but not elsewhere.  Black people were only on tv or in newspapers if something dangerous happened.

She worries about whether her art does what she wants it to - even now.  Not many young black people go to art school.  Their parents don't understand art, especially how it can lead to a career.  Younger curators, editors, museums are what is needed to build on changes.

Thoughts from the Swimming Pool

1. Sketchbooks Payroll, and Key Fob need to be displayed on small, square plinths.  Ask Colin to make them.

2. Ask Colin how best to attach shelves to chipboard.  See if he has a rest day when I'm staging and whether he can help me.

3. Aunt Doreen wants to attend the PV.  I need to drive to Shropshire to collect her.  I could ask Darren to stay with me before the PV to help with staging.  I could pick him up from Coventry on the way back from Shropshire.  Darren could stay with me for a few days.

4. Ring cousin Barbara.  See whether she would provide accommodation for Doreen for a few days until my exhibition has finished.  Then I would like to take Doreen to Kent for a couple of days so she could visit Sissinghurst and other gardens there, before I take her back to Shropshire.

5. The private view (mezzanine floor) is going to have coffee and vegan chocolate from the tenants on the ground floor (and my cake) as refreshments.  Ask Darren if he would act as waiter, and take refreshments on a tray upstairs (to save congestion on the stairs)

6. My great-nieces may attend the exhibition, and 7-year-old Maisie aspires to be an artist.  Provide some key fobs and pens, to make her think about different types of sketchbook.  Or maybe provide letter-shaped sketchbooks

7. Before sending latest draft to Imogen, read and identify questions about why I am struggling with the writing.

8. I am quite pleased that I've identified three key values that I associate with women - verbal and practical skills, work ethic, kindness.    This is different to men's values of power and authority, and men's values of women - passivity, sexuality.

More than Muses: The Female Gaze

Alexandra Kokoli and Clare Gannaway

Alexandra started with Laura Mulvey and The Male Gaze.  (Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, 2009 and 1975). Mulvey is a filmmaker and feminist activist, not a theorist.

 Scopophilia (pleasure in looking) when taken in the man looking at woman context reduces the woman to spectacle.    Male gaze is about knowledge, power, pleasure.  Not visual but perspectival and defined in terms of social relations.  

Mulvey considered the active/passive heterosexual division of labour in film.  Shots of men are of him doing something active; shots of women are of her being inactive (or decorative).  This made me think of James Bond films!

AK showed Andy Dwyer, Parks and Recreation S4 E18 as an example of when men don't get women's role.  (Watch this).

'What recurs overall is a constant return to woman not ... , as a visual image but as a subject of inquiry' Mulvey 2009:130

Mulvey wrote an angry essay in Spare Rib at critiquing Allen Jones and Chair.  'You don't know what's happening do you, Mr Jones'.  His Chair piece was originally designed for the film Clockwork Orange - but was rejected!  He claimed he made it as a piece of Forniphilia (depicting people as furniture, as part of fetishism).  AK also showed Jemima Stehli Chair 1997/8 which was made as a feminist response to Chair (I found it even more disturbing and not feminist at all.  A copy of Chair, but the woman model has no knickers or laced gloves.  Class discussion felt original Chair had underwear in order for it to be taken off).

When women portrayed themselves, female artists showed themselves painting.  Laura Knight, names herself and the model.  'Laura Knight with model, Ella Louise Naper ('Self Portrait') 1913.

AK compared some imagery when painted by men and women.  Susanna and the Elders:
Tintorette - Susanna looking at self in mirror - vanity, making self available to the men.
Gentileschi - Susanna resisting lewd men.

Faith Ringgold - exhibition at New Serpentine Gallery June-September 2019 (Also FR doing talk on 6 June at 25 New Lion Yard - .... AND I'VE GOT A TICKET!).  She does story quilts about black women's lives .  Much quilts.    Hybrid of history and people, and fiction.  Adds her black fictional character, Willia, in various ways to art history.

Picasso Desmoiselles d'Avignon.
Ringgold Picasso's Studio.  When FR was a young artist, she worked as a model to pay her way.  Self portrait as nude - looks bored in her quilt.  She talks to black sex workers - experience of being exoticised. They are realists - 'if being an artist does not work out, remember you're sitting on an asset!'.  Similarities between her work and Picasso's:  interest in African masks.  Masks on her quilts, and masks were collected by Picasso.  Considers the mask as indicative of female sexuality - dangerous, unknown and desirable.

Claudette Johnson.  Oxford exhibition on now.  BLK art group.  Pastel on wood.  Deliberately unfinished.  Nocolourbar.com.  Black body as active.  Resonates with boundaries space for black women.

Woman with an earring (two female symbol earrings - lesbian symbols).

Senzeni Marasela.  Covering Sarah Baartman.  Hottentot woman brought to England with promises of riches, but used as freak show exhibit for her physical body.  Pseudo scientific interest.  Marasela works in monochrome - red.  Embroidery indicates scarring, reparation and bleeding.  She died and parts of her head, and genitalia were preserved in museums.  Nelson Mandela asked for her body to be returned to SA for interment and this was thankfully done.

Susan Hiller.  10 months.  Female experience - 10 lunar months of pregnancy.  Artistic creation and procreation.  Ideological or practical?  No baby shown.  Female body as unknowable, as a universe.

Mary Kelly Manicure/Pedicure series 1974.  Her artwork considers the relationship between mother and child as the child moves from infant to speaking subject; non-speaking too speaking. Primapara - veers too abstraction.  Regimes of daily care.  Intimacy of infant flesh.  Lots about women and labour.  Women and work.

Sonia Boyce.  Considers what other representations can be made by the gaze.  Hybrid UK/Caribbean taste in colour and pattern in a British house.  Two social beings in the same space.  Works with collaborations with people, and cacophony in pattern.

I asked what her definition of the female gaze was.  AK said she did not have one.  She recommended  Bracha Ettinger.  The Matrixial Gaze.  Loosen that border.  Defines the problem as how men look at women.  The concept of self and other is very stable.  Gender not as definite as in Mulvey's context.  Demolish the one-ness of the male gaze.  States masculinity is not the problem; one-ness is the problem.  (I think this means the single point of view of the viewer is the problem).

In conversation

Clare Gannaway, Manchester Art Gallery - Sonia Boyce, 6 Acts.  Museum takeover.

2017 Sonia Boyce Retrospective.  1990s to present.  More than her 1980s work, when she was working with black, female identity.  In the mid 1990s started working in an open, improvised, collaborative way.

Living artists want to do something new with real people.  Clare Gannaway had conversation with SB and other curators while walking through static, long-hung galleries.  Gallery 10 had not been rehung since 2002.  Takeover format.  One evening a group takeover the gallery.  Feminist takeovers etc.  But actually have very little impact, eradicated after the event.  Gallery 10 called In Pursuit of Beauty.  Decided on performance, brought in drag artists from the nearby gay village.  Play with gender.

Anna Phylactic, Cheddar Gorgeous (unicorn), Lasane Shabazz (Ira Aldridge), Licquorice Black (Sappho); Venus Vienna (Nymph).  Gave questions and text about artworks on display.   Removed Hylas and the Numphs from the Gallery, for one week only.  Contextualised language about the bodies on display.  Who's pursuing whom?  What message does calling a woman in an image 'femme fatale' give?  Asked for notes to be stuck to the wall with visitors response to this image being removed.  Varied responses were received.

An attendee at the evening event, evidently uncomfortable about this takeover, went to the Guardian, and Jonathon Jones wrote a polemic opinion piece about the event, without researching or attending it, but writing on hearsay.  The attendee stated Manchester Art Gallery was censoring Hylas and the Nymphs and had permanently removed it from display.

Gallery 10 - whose power on display?  They chose to look at the stories and language used to describe them, in the pictures on display.  Empire; race; intersecting narrative.  Redisplay.  Bring different things out from store.

Impact on artists career by what the curator chooses to display.  Positive and negative questions for the curator.

Clare Gannaway resists the press preview show for takeovers.  Purpose is art making and change and dialogue, not footfall from traditionalists.  Pop-up shows need legacy.  Lots of outreach work as curators.  Sometimes, like with Hylas and the Nymphs, there is a lot of anger directed at the curator when the event offends the more conservative end of the audience.  But the role of the curator in a public art museum, with public funds, is not as a custodian, but as a facilitator.

Need to go beyond representation but go to a process that changes.