How images are the making of the Women's Art Library/Make

When a group of women artists decided to organise their slides to inspire others to document themselves and raise the visibility of women’s art, they could not have known that several decades later those slides would still be together, forming the core of an internationally significant research resource. How did this idea of gathering together images transform a women’s art group – in the 1980s these were almost as common as book groups are today – into the Women’s Art Library/Make collection? Historically rooted in gender politics and the subsequent emergence of a radicalised women’s art practice and feminist art criticism, WAL/Make is an exciting ‘work in progress’. Now based in Goldsmiths, University of London it is being developed as a key special collection by the Library

Archives and Identities, New Contemporaries & South London Gallery

This panel discussion, part of New Contemporaries Archives & Identities online symposium explored the use of archives in contemporary visual arts practice in the exploration of identities. The programme reflected on specific methodologies of how practitioners have used both personal and public repositories to consider their own positions in relation to investigating specific archival material. Jo Melvin gave the introductory presentation to this panel, on how we handle the archive, identity strategies, and what questions the archive can provoke. Melvin also chaired the event, which included Duncan Campbell, Althea Greenan and Sunil Gupta. The discussion was followed by an audience Q&A

Feminism@Goldsmiths

With short presentations by Althea Greenan (Women's Art Library), Rosalyn George (Educational Research), Berta Joncus (Music), Vivienne Richmond (History) and Nicole Wolf (Visual Culture)

it is this it is this, it is this

it is this it is this, it is this A portrait of Margaret Tait Transcript of performative video-essay by Laura Edbrook & Sarah Forrest. Script developed from dialogue between Edbrook, Forrest, and Margaret Tait’s conversational notes on the unpublished manuscripts “The Lilywhite Boys” and “Personae.” It is this it is this, it is this considers the manner of closeness to and distance from in Tait’s writing and filmmaking—a close looking, or a scouring, where Tait uniquely captures the quotidian but consistently resists the autobiographical. With thanks to Orkney Library & Archive, MAP Magazine, Suzanne van der Lingen, Claire Walsh and Dr. Sarah Neely for their generous support of this work. ~ Of Other Spaces: Where Does Gesture Become Event? is an annotation and reflection on the two-chapter eponymous exhibition and event project that took place at Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee in Scotland between October 2016 – March 2017, curated by Sophia Yadong Hao. The core of the publication is constituted by material presented and performed by over thirty thinkers, art historians, artists, writers and poets at the project’s culminating symposium, 12-Hour Action Group alongside important historical texts by Susan Hiller, Mary Kelly, Monica Ross, Annabel Nicolson and others. Resonating with the ethos of open dialogue and the experimentation of women artists’ collectives in the 1970s and 80s, Of Other Spaces: Where Does Gesture Become Event? constructs a dynamic, open and collaborative arena that foregrounds practices of resistance, collectivity and self-organisation. Highlighting the inherent seditiousness that animates feminist thinking, the book seeks out the lodestone of a volatile politics, which calls for and instigates urgent alternatives to the cultural, political and economic machineries of power that haunt this world

Salon for a speculative future

The Salon for a Speculative Future was inaugurated in March 2019 in celebration of Women’s History Month, as a platform for cross-generational and cross-disciplinary exchange. Reflecting on the current political and economic global situation, in particular the exponential acceleration of a technology-driven platform capitalism, many women advocate positive change for an ecologically sustainable and humane future. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin argues that science fiction does not simply extrapolate from the present to predict the future—instead, the fiction writer engages in thought-experiments where ideas and intuition move within the confines set by the experiment. This book hosts imaginative thinking by seventy-five women artists, sharing their influences, inspired by women’s contributions to diverse fields, from art, education, and science to political activism. Salon for a Speculative Future honours and shares insights and experimental thinking towards a positive future