List of research trips over last 2 years - quite a few!
Visits Womanhood exhibition, Cambridge. 2/7/17. Interesting, but very essentialist exhibition of two female artists. Expressed the female condition in glass, print and ceramic. Brilliantly done, not my taste – too much about blood, feeling drained, mastectomy scars. Narrative of many women’s embodiment. 3 hours
Giacometti, Tate Modern. 10/7/17. Sculptures – Man & Woman; Spoon Woman. Attenuated forms embodied human anxieties. Extreme reduction enabled a traumatised war generation to recognise itself. 2 hours
The Hardman’s House, NT. 18/7/17. Photographers who lived ‘over the shop’. Margaret Hardman married the boss, ran the business, adept at marketing. Ordinary 1930s lifestyle and flat but very successful. 2 hours
Beatles Childhood Homes, NT, 19/7/17. John Lennon lived with middle-class Aunt Mimi. She did her best by him, despite him being an intelligent arty boy, unsuited to his grammar school education. Mimi - Boys from Paul’s estate were ‘common’, from George’s Speke estate were ‘rough’. Paul McCartney: motivation for guitar “you can’t play a trumpet and sing!” 3 hours
Speke Hall, NT. 20/7/17 B/W timbered property. 1500s Catholic – priestholes and access or Mersey/Ireland, affluent, much glass and quatrefoils. Symbolic ceilings – pomegranates, figs, hops, honeysuckle, birds and serpent. 3 hours
Little Moreton Hall, NT, 21/7/17. B/W timbered property. Extended many times, much glass. Allegience to Crown in 1600s led to downfall. Shakespeare meant to have been key visitor. 2 hours
Peckover House, Wisbech. 22/7/17. Quaker home. Grocer turned banker, ruthless in business but principled pacifist, became Lord Lieutenant. Daughter Priscilla Peckover, was leading teetotaller, Esperanto speaker and peace activist, nominated for Nobel Peace Prize 3 times 1903-13 – never awarded (because she was a woman?) 2 hours
Chris Ofili, Weaving Magic, 7/8/17. National Gallery. I know why the caged bird sings tapestry. Drawn in charcoal then w/c wash, green orange purple. Tapestry weave fantastic to convey the drawing media. Weavers not named at NG. 2 hours
Festival of Quilts. 13/8/17. Annabel Rainbow Woman series. Beautifully stitched and drawn imagery of nude women with a message about the role and quandaries of making ethical decisions as a middle aged woman. 2 hours
Coventry Cathedral. 14/8/17. Centre for reconciliation 1 hour
Black Country Museum, Tipton, 16/7/17. Mary McArthur leader of National Federation of Women Workers. Campaigned for universal female suffrage, and anti-sweating league. 1910 chainmakers strike for more than starvation wages – business responded by mechanisation and contracting out. 3 hours
Wallington, NT, 24/8/17. Socialist leaning Lord Trevelyan, Labour MP, monied from shipping and mining. Left house to NT, disinherited 6 children. Old roué, many affairs, had son with cook, brought up as extra child to legitimate family. OK with male outdoor staff, but disliked male indoor staff (worried about wife and 4 daughters???). 3 hours
Devil’s Porridge Museum, Eastriggs, Scotland. 25/8/17 Fantastic exhibition about role of women in wartime, making the explosive mixture for bombs. Clear stats about women’s work roles and wages before and after WW1. 2 hours
Kelvingrove, Scotland. 26/8/17 Tapestries from Burrell Collection. Beatrix Soetkens in Bed – vision of renovating a statue, repatriated to Brussels. Much symbolism in tapestry – meaning lost to history – keys (responsibility?), belt, scabbard, chamber pot, one boot, bible (faith?), candle (light of world?). 1 hour
Broughton, Kircudbright, NT Scotland. 27/8/17. E A Hornel’s home – Glasgow Boy. Amazing light on west coast of Scotland. Combined impasto impressionism with photo-realism faces. Child models paid 1 shilling, Mother chaperone 2 shillings. Sentimental pictures popular in Victorian/Edwardian times. 2 hours
Cragside, NT. 28/8/17 Fabulously wealthy William Armstrong, engineer/inventor. Munitions – rifling inside cannons made 57x more accurate. 102 rooms but homely feel. Victorian/1930s. Unmodernised as money ran out with nephew heir. 10 ton purple marble fireplace built for visit of Prince of Wales – display of money, power, status. 3 hours
Mr Straw’s House, NT, Worksop. 29/8/17. Fantastic. In 1939 Two brothers inherited Victorian house, kept in style of 1920s parents – Sanderson, Egypt stair carpet (popular in 1920s), leather pattern wallpaper. Sanderson still had wood print blocks to reprint wallpaper, to repair water damage. 3 hours
Grayson Perry, The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever, Serpentine Gallery. 8/9/17 Paint and canvas have had their day – all hail the humble pot! Battle of Britain (brexit) tapestry shows leaders and remainers divided by railway and motorway, with no-man’s land in the middle. 2 hours
Traces Exhibition, Snape Maltings 29/10/17. Supporting fellow female artist friends. Abstract acrylics, assemblages and prints. Watched Lori start to shake as she sold 3 paintings in quick succession! 3 hours
London Transport Museum. Poster Girls. 30/10/17. Chairman Pick was keen to have female poster artists in 1920s/30s. Paid much less than men, but commissioned for sports events poster, not restricted to floral subjects. Women often took male names. Included Laura Knight and Enid Marx 3 hours
Cezanne Portraits. NPG 4/11/17 Refused conventions to make men look important or powerful, or women beautiful or seductive. Perceived as combative. Wife most frequent sitter – always passive. Maniere Couillard – crude ballsy style. 2 hours
20thCentury Gallery, NPG. 4/11/17. Rehang. Shows ‘inspirational pioneers, responsible for devts that transformed Britain’. WWI v few women, only one Sikh man – not even finished! Skewed to WW1. Cigarette cards – exquisite – but male media? Removed Beatrix Potter, included Roald Dahl as yet another war image. Not impressed. 3 hours
Grayson Perry, First Site, Colchester The Life of Julie Cope. 18/11/17. Clever social commentary interweaving observations of evolution of life in Essex over last 60 years with social aspirations and expectations/reality of life. Wonderful woven tapestries 2 hours
Pippa Davismoon and Charlotte Morrison. Cambridge Artworks. Womanhood. 27/11/17. Essentialist – not my favoured form. Vaginas in glass and ceramic. Body image, scars and conflicting narrative. Breast feeding – at least 6 months/not in public; I can’t/cover up. Surgeons see women’s bodies as object; women see surgery as bereavement. 2 hours
View Seven, Menier Gallery. Southwark 6/12/17. Exhibition of textile work by women. Clever titles – ‘Blunt your sharpness’, ‘whole’ (mending piece).
Cardiff Castle, Wales. 10/12/17. Extravgant Gothic interior. Marquis of Bute only used for 4 weeks per year, when on mining/docks business. Devout Catholic, linguist, cultural supporter. Arts & Crafts and Arabic styles. Castle given to Welsh people when mines nationalised in 1948. 3 hours.
National Museum of Wales. 11/12/17. Terry Setch – Greenham Common women – inclement weather – strength, ingenuity, resilience, determination and power. Tudor portraits give insight into mines, docks, child mortality. Impressionist art bequeathed by Davies, mines heiress, spinster sisters – Red Cross nurses, ran WW1 convalescent home. 3 hours
St Fagan’s Museum of Welsh Life. 12/12/17 Open air museum. Amazing sofa upholstered with petit point squares, embroidered by visiting ladies. Many Welsh speaking staff. Welsh promoted in schools since Welsh Assembly started. 3 hours.
Paddy Killer, South Shields. 28/12/17 Great exhibition by woman fascinated by family relationships and textiles. Beautiful drawings of lace, women and cats. 3 hours
Blists Hill, Victorian Town, Shropshire. 29/12/17. Phrases from printers workshop – Mind your ps and qs (p and q are easily reversed); dab hand (dab is an inking mop); out of sorts (need enough of a sort (font) to complete a print), upper case/lower case (capitals kept in the lid of a letter tray, and small letters in the base) 3 hours
Wightwick Manor, NT, 1/1/18. Amazing manor in high Arts & Crafts style. Big history of Geoffrey Mander, MP, raising awareness of women’s issues in Parliament. Lots of Art Deco art, and information about key women artists of the period. 3 hours
20thCentury Gallery, NPG 3/1/18. Skewed to 1900-1920. War leaders and Bloomsbury set. Only 33% of images from 1950-2000. Most images about achievement, power of men and hedonism. Does not show Captains of industry; social campaigners; sports people; people of faith; or service industries. Many (Jewish?) intellectual refugees. 3 hours
May Morris, William Morris Gallery. 21/1/18. Amazing stitched pieces made by her. Supported her father’s business and followed his views on beauty, respecting skill and colour trends. 3 hours
Votes for Women NPG, 26/1/19 Suffragists, Millicent Garrett Fawcett – non-violent; Suffragettes, Emmeline Pankhurst – violence and vandalism. Women’s Freedom League resistence and peaceful protest. Working class women prisoners force-fed; aristocrats not. Many interesting women – but only Emmeline Pankhurst available as postcard! 2 hours
Hackney Museum. 8/2/18 Women’s achievements. Amazing exhibition about women campaigners for rights of ethnic minorities, unions, childcare, trans people. Showed how it was a continual battle to get people who were not white, straight, men to be treated fairly … and valued at all!. 3 hours
Glasgow School of Art Tour. 24/2/18. Lots about Rennie Mackintosh art nouveau – praises the female soft curves contrasted with strong uprights. Female oval over entrance to Ladies Art Society premises. Margaret MacDonald made everything herself – no contracting out. “I have talent but Margaret has genius.” 2 hours
Scottish National Gallery. 25/2/18. The Ladies Waldegrave. Sir Joshua Reynolds. 3 sisters winding thread and doing tambour lace – active and educated. Descriptor is appalling. Says they are daughters of an Earl, commissioned by their uncle Walpole from Reynolds. Only one of the sisters, Lady Anna Horatia gets named! 1 hour
Pauline Burbidge and Charlie Poulson. Songs for Winter. 25/2/18. Monoprint grasses printed on fabric and quilted. Big, bold shapes. Lots of continuous line, in drawing, resembles lines of stitch. Things you cannot actually see – eg growth. 1 hour
Kelvingrove, Scotland. Decorative arts strongly associated with women. Jessie M King – dressing table set, silver and enamel. King was the only Glasgow Style artist to design for Liberty & Co commercial range of enamelled jewellery. 1 hour
Riverside Museum, Glasgow 3/3/18. Transport Museum. Modern social take on transport. Includes Wilton coachbuilt prams; bicycles; wheelchairs; skateboards; fairgrounds; horses and car races. Stories of deaf carpenter, Asian bus drivers, poverty and pawnshops. 2 hours
Charles I King & Collector, Royal Academy, 5/3/18. Collections formed by opportunity, fashion and personal taste. Affluent portrait of woman with blackwork collar – different pattern inside collar to outside. 1 hour
Hanbury Hall, NT. 6/3/18. "Women make over 50% of population but less than 0.5% of recorded history, especially working class women." Harlot’s progress by Hogarth virtually unknown, yet Rake’s Progress is known! 2 hours
Baddesley Clinton, NT, 7/3/18. NT Women and Power exhibition advertised but nothing about women here! Naff. 2 hours
Birmingham Back-to-Backs, NT, 8/3/18. NT starting to tell narrative from the standpoint of the powerless. Fascinating. Jewish watchmaker and jeweller – Levi; George Saunders, Caribbean tailor (told ‘the job’s gone’ because he was black); Eliza Wheeler, gin dealer and wire drawer. Inward facing courtyard homes cheaper as less fresh air than outward facing. 2 hours
Redditch Needle museum. 6/3/18 Needle making a key industry in this Victorian town. Incredibly harmful to health, largely women’s work. Very highly skilled processes to make all sorts of needles – sewing, embroidery, sailing, upholstery, hypodermic. Highly skilled product now taken for granted. 4 hours
Scottish NPG, When We Were Young 10/3/18. Narrative of social issues for the young, from deprived areas. Victorian to modern day family photography, campaigning. Edith Tudor Hart – women’s medical services, by women for women; post WW2, concerns about fatherless boys drifting into crime. 1 hour
Monet & Architecture NG, 27/4/18. Visual identification of landscape by scale of spires. Direction of travel and scale indicated how far away/how long it would take to arrive. Suggests identity, time and distance. 2 hours
Giants of Victorian Photography. NPG 11/5/18. Naff. Poorly explained. Everything referencing Lewis Carroll stressed the children in his shots were ‘mostly chaperoned’ but did not actually deal with his alleged paedophilia. Why the historical veneration of Lewis Carroll? 1 hour
Tacita Dean. NPG 11/5/18. Naff. Unclear purpose. No explanations. Strange videos/ films. Very few attendees. 1 hour
LAM. Musee d’art Modern, Lille, France. 29/5/18. Many Fauves, Modigliani, Braque. Psychiatric patient Le Clerq made embroideries on military/religious/erotic themes from salvage materials from the laundry. Donated to Dr Jacqueline, head doctor in 1966. 2 hours
Grayson Perry exhibition, Firstsite Colchester. 12/6/18 Great exhibition of Maldon tapestries and other works. Represents the Essex hinterlands very well, and narrates modern life stories, of people surrounded by the reality of their artefacts and environment. 3 hours
Stoneywell National Trust, 6/8/18. Arts & Crafts house with exquisite furniture. All have mortice and tenon joints showing, for integrity of making. Wooden chest carved end panels – fritillary; oak; strawberry; currant; laurel; honeysuckle; carnation. Knitted cotton coverlet – leaf pattern set on point. 3 hours
62 Group exhibition, MAC Birmingham. 10/8/18 – Caren Garfen’s hospital beds, all different sizes in minature, all sorts of heartwrenching comments on them about the experience and reality of suffering from anorexia. 2 hours
The Coffin Museum, Birmingham. 11/8/18. Newman Bros made coffin furniture and linings. Could provide coffin linings in Aston Villa colours. Joyce Green worked way up from clerk to owner, by share bonuses and inheritance from Director. Refused 1.2m from redevelopers, sold for £400,000 once it was Grade II listed/an industrial history museum. 2 hours
Edward Bawden, Dulwich Picture Gallery. 23/8/18. As wartime artist, paints all grades, notes names, grades and nationality. Combines lettering and imagery in early work. Wonderful blotter – pattern and doodles – normally valueless, beautiful detailing, yet preserved! 3 hours
Do I have to draw you a picture? Heong Gallery Cambridge. 1/9/18 Bob & Roberta Smith – letter to Gove – good sentiment but too much to read. Louise Bourgoise prints lovely – but gallery statements obtuse, did not add to viewing experience. 2 hours
Lyveden New Build, NT, Kent 10/9/18. Catholic Pattern and symbolism. Symbolism is clear to those who understand it. I’m not Catholic so I don’t. Is symbolism designed to exclude? Is this a good thing – to select the audience, or not? 2 hours
Ightham Mote, NT, Kent 14/9/18. Pattern and narrative. Sunflower pattern on carver chair. Indicator of power and status of person who sat in it? And fecundity from offsets on sunflower? Symbolic of powerful person in his absence, when he’s not sitting in it? 2 hours
Knole, NT, Kent 14/9/18. Women and Power theme. Loved Lubaina Himid’s imagery of the ‘blackamoor’ laundrymaid Grace Robinson on the downpipes that collected the water for her skilled labour – washing high status collars and cuffs. 2 hours
Stoneacre NT, Kent 15/9/18. Velvet curtains, printed with Angel and Trumpet. Other site of this hand printed fabric is V&A. Lyon sisters hand sewn samplers with multiplication table by Christianna Lyon fecit 1819. Fecit means s/he made it - stitch or arithmetic? 2 hours
Smallhythe, NT, Kent 15/9/18 Ellen Terry, Shakespearean actress. Costume style from Aesthetic movement – loose and comfortable, enabled free movement on stage, worn while pregnant. Beetle dress (Lady MacBeth) uses beetle wingcases to sparkle in the limelight. 2 hours
Bateman’s, NT Kent 16/9/18 Rudyard Kipling’s house. Associated with strong women all his life. Women & Power reinterprets wife from a controlling shrew, to a woman who defended Kipling from the demands of unannounced visitors and ran his household to enable him to concentrate on his work. Also reinterprets The Female of the Species. 3 hours
Monks House, NT, Kent 16/9/18. Virginia & Leonard Woolf’s house. Good explanation of her bi-polar disorder (paternal genetics). Manic when writing, depressed when published. Ran Hogarth Press. Covered books with hand watermarked papers even when ill. 2 hours
Petworth House, NT. Elizabeth Ilive. Female heiress, betrothed at 3, to protect inheritance. Multiply married. Invents cross bar lever to aid moving rocks, to till soil. Researches potatoes – her work, head gardener gets credit. Mrs Elizabeth Purser. Housekeeper. Identified by bunch of keys – responsibility. Hires, fires, supervises staff. Maids who handle fine china get paid more.Dowager Lady Egremont. Death duties of Lord Egremont led to Petworth being given to NT, and art to Govt in lieu of tax.Lady Lucy Percy. Lady of Bedchamber to Q Henrietta Maria. Plays on both sides of Royalist/ Parliamentarian divide.Lady Elizabeth Percy. Married 3 x by age 15. 4 hours
Raw Materials, Valance House. 20/9/18. Textile industries in East End, Russian Jews, unemployment, attempts at unionisation to improve conditions. Salvation Army Knitting Home provided accommodation & employment for destitute women. 2 hours
Virginia Woolf: An exhibition inspired by her writings. Fitzwilliam Museum. 28/11/19. 2 kinds of equality – one where women gain admittance to the world of men (vote, education, financial independence) or remodelling society to allow men and women to live on own terms. 2 hours
Women, Power, Protest. Birmingham Art Gallery. 12/12/19. Mary Kelly Post Partum. Not about competing with men. More about the reality of her life. Not sweet scented and sentimentalised. About her reality – complex, unsavoury. Humanist? 3 hours
Irish Linen Centre, Lisburn. 2/1/19. Cottage industry. Women did yarn prep, men worked loom, land and marketplace. Webster is a weaver, web is finished cloth. 2 hours
Mount Stewart House, NT. Ulster 3/1/19. Women and Power. Included working class and gentry. Gave pro and anti-suffrage views of women. Anti-suffrage wanted status quo to continue. Pro-suffrage wanted women’s lives to improve. 3 hours
Fashion & Feminism, Ulster Museum. 4/1/19 Rational Dress Society campaigned against harmful dress fashions. Late Victorian – too much corsetry; 1920s promotion of soft, uncorsetted, bias cut, post-war New Look – rehashed corsetry, goes back to women as decorative – and passive because they can’t move! 2 hours
Making Her Mark: Women Printmakers from the Ulster Museum Collection. 4/1/19. Women artists known for their relationship to an artistic man, not their own work. Women used art to communicate wider public views that would be dismissed in wider (male) journalism (Lady Butler). Women have to join female groups in order to get their work shown and sold. 2 hours
Edward Byrne Jones, Tate Britain. 29/1/19 Stitching exquisite. May Morris. Really dislike his portrayal of women – languid, beautiful, sexualised powerful predators. Men victims of female power and desire. Yuk. 2 hours
Louise Bourgoise, Kettles Yard. 30/1/19. Don’t really get her work. Beautifully made bronze double breasts object. Textiles look unfinished. Poor gallery statements. 2 hours
The Beautiful Stitch, Embroiders Guild. 8/2/19. Embroidery as art; education; fashion; industry; status. Industry is both personal and commercial. Quaker sampler “speak well or speak not at all, that no-one may be the worse for what you say”. Religious repression of women! Education Act 1902 needlework and cookery compulsory for girls only. 2 hours
Hannah Hauxwell Quilt Auction, Leyburn. 9/2/19. Fascinating auction of traditional thrift quilts and knitting sticks made by her family. Many items bought by textile dealers - will remain in the area. Double the prices anticipated. Some pieces went to Australian collectors, esp knitting sticks. Good to see her stuff valued and collected, but probably influenced by power of television, documentary Too Long A Winter. 4 hours
National Railway Museum, York. 10/2/19. Ambulance trains WW1. First Ambulance trains organised by rank, expects casualties in same proportion as ranks. Officers segregated from men by door (limits air circulation!) Later trains organised by lying down cases, sitting up cases and secure mental cases. Quakers ran 4 out of 12 trains. Woman nurse featured. 2 hours
Martin Parr, Only Human, NPG. 12/4/19 Photos as social document, artistic commentary and performance. Questions purpose of social events. Phenomenon of Britishness is different for the British abroad. Expat communities - white privilege is out of step with contemporary British life. 2 hours
Sorolla Spanish Master of Light. National Gallery. 28/5/19. Paints family mostly in manual work, plays with light and movement. Social themes: criminality, exploitation of labour, disease. Viewers preferred looking at pretty/family images not sad ones. Wall panels in both Spanish and English, huge attendance by Spanish extended families. 2 hours
Faith Ringgold. 6/6/19 Images from black woman’s perspective. Powerful narratives of black women – raped by white men, Tar Beach (holidaying on tenement roof). Black slaves allowed to makes quilts to keep master warm. Much text in art. 2 hours
Claudette Johnson. I came to Dance. Modern Art, Oxford. 13/6/19. Amazing show of large drawings of black women. Allows sitters to take up space in a way that reflects who they are. Gestures go outside the frame. Raised arm both assertive and vulnerable. 2 hours
Lee Krasner. Barbican. 3/7/19. Very diverse media. Different phases of life, mourning period after Pollock’s death. Cuts old drawings for later works. Very large. 2 hours
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