Woman Up!

This is our last Woman Up! On Tour episode for 2023. We would like to take this opportunity to send a massive thanks to all organizations that worked with us this year and all the amazing artists that shared their work with us, reminding us of what's possible to create and achieve even when challenged. Thanks to Jess Gell for her amazing video skills and acegrams for making it all possible. And lastly THANK YOU! Thank you to all our incredible listeners, you've been an amazing support and we appreciate you all for taking the time to hear us out!We wish you all a peaceful and happy transition into the new year- - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - -  -In this episode we talk to wonderful artist Rosy Martin.Rosy Martin (born London 1946) is an artist-photographer, psychological-therapist, workshop leader, lecturer and writer. She explores the relationships between photography, memory, identities and unconscious processes using self-portraiture, still life photography and video.Starting in 1983, working with the late Jo Spence, she evolved and developed a new photographic practice- phototherapy - incorporating re-enactments. Through embodiment, they explored the psychic and social construction of identities within the drama of the everyday. My ‘therapeutic gaze' provided a safe space for exploring one's own stories in profoundly innovative ways.Exhibiting Internationally and publishing widely since 1985, she has investigated issues including gender, sexualities, ageing, class, location, shame and family dynamics. Her photographic practice is grounded in research, the subjects arise from personal lived experiences, yet communicate to a broad audience. For example in ‘Transforming the suit: what does a lesbian look like?' 1987 she played with different historical and contemporary stereotypes to challenge simplistic assumptions. She used still life and video in ‘Too close to home?' to explore the experiences of pre-bereavement, loss, grief and reparation by focusing upon her childhood home as a metaphor/metonym for both her father and mother, anticipating and mourning their deaths. She researched working-class suburban life inspired by this semi-detached house, almost unchanged since the 1930s. In ‘The end of the line' she photographed through tears a soft and melancholy goodbye to her roots. On turning fifty, her focus became contesting the dominant representations of ageing women, a subject she has returned to in her seventies. Using humour, play and parody the ageing body is reconfigured as present, joyous and defiant.  Martin has run intensive experiential phototherapy workshops and given lectures in Universities and Galleries throughout Britain, the USA, Canada, Eire and Finland. She also ran workshops in community settings, including a women's prison, projects with survivors of sexual abuse and school-based projects on digital identities. 

In this episode we are in Margate at Liminal Gallery  talking to founder and curator Louise Fitzjohn and Margate based artists Mercedes Workmen and Catherine Chinatree. Liminal Gallery represents contemporary artists working across the UK and Ireland. Its main ethos is to present an all-round snapshot of what is happening right now in contemporary art, showcasing artists at all stages of their careers working across all mediums. Mercedes is a self-taught artist; predominantly working in ceramics but also other areas of sculpture, painting and drawing.After her mum died in January 2020 she decided to make some tiles for a splash back in her kitchen and it grew to be huge project; she created enough tiles for 3 bathrooms, a utility room and her whole kitchen.Her work is a response to her overactive mind. She has ADHD and work fast and determinedly. Themes that recur in her work are relationships and interactions, perceptions, judgements, idiosyncrasies, cliches. Most usually around womanhood, motherhood and identityCatherine is a multidisciplinary artist, with a strong focus on large scale paintings, both indoors and outside. The work can be described as both figurative and socially surreal. She also work with sound and moving image in a collage type of way, connecting footage/sound at random. Most of her inspiration comes from the events of everyday life, of symbolism and rituals and the people she meets. Often complex layers of history, social anthropology and Cultural displacement become part of the work, as she investigate the notion of the constructed self and human behaviour. Being of Welsh, Caribbean and Irish descent, She is deeply rooted in hybrid culture, and the idea of a shared reality. Not only between us as humans, but also everything that makes up our natural/supernatural world, and how we balance between the two. 

In this episode we are at Friction Arts in Birmingham talking to Sandra Hall Artistic Director and co-founder of Friction Arts (alongside Lee Griffiths) and artists Natalie Mason and Savhanha Small Wyn.For 30 years, Friction has produced an ambitious programme of creative work, often in partnership or collaboration with artists from all kinds of disciplines; currently it includes Birmingham's only free visual art club for young people delivered by professional artists, a ground-breaking multicultural music programme in schools and community settings, our Culture Club for young people, A Word From the Wise – a programme celebrating the work of elders and older artists, currently through our ‘Home' project, Walking Over Coals, with an artist development programme for emerging, emerged and submerging artists and an ever-evolving series of site-specific performances and interventions in a variety of settings like their between-lockdown show ‘Quiet Carnival'.Natalie Mason is a performer-composer, facilitator and researcher.Natalie has been directing the Multicultural Music Making project (MMM) she created in partnership with Friction Arts. As a multi-instrumentalist, Natalie has performed and recorded internationally at the BBC Proms, FIFA World Cup, Symphony Hall and Real World Studios. She has been commissioned as a composer by Surge Orchestra, Flatpack Film Festival and Dorcha, with her music played on BBC Radio 3. She is a member of avant-pop experimental duo Kamura Obscura, co-curates alternative music night Club Integral Midlands Branch and recently completed a national tour with The Nightingales.Savhanha Small Wyn, a poet, writer and mum to two under two of Vietnamese-Jamaican-British heritage. Savhanha is a poet and writer and has been published in the Visual Verse with my poem 'Pieces', and have since had three more published on their site ('A Knight's Tale', 'Firewatch', and 'Spring'), along with a piece published on Spare Parts Lit and another on Halu Halo Journal, and two more pieces to be published during 2023. Since having her children Savhanha has realised the difficulties of freelancing and childcare which inspired her to launch an Arts zine online called RECESSES, a multi-media zine that focuses on work that's been rejected, forgotten, or is new and experimental.

In this Woman Up! On Tour episode we went to Brighton and spent time at the incredible Quiet Down There studio talking to thee inspiring women Lucy Jeffries, AFLO.the poet  and Alina Hazadeh. .Quiet Down There offers people routes to expressing and developing their own creativity – outside of the traditional structures of the arts. They work in markets, charity shops, laundrettes and other spaces where people already are. They are ambitious for the communities that they collaborate with and work alongside artists to hone and develop their socially engaged practice..AFLO. the poet is an award-winning Brighton-based spoken word artist, activist and academic who embraces creative expression to disrupt the status quo and inspire social change. AFLO. uses poetry as a vehicle to address hard-hitting topics, particularly racism and mental health, primarily speaking from her lived experiences. AFLO. has performed at various protests, festivals and events. AFLO. is one of Brighton Dome's in-house artists for 23/24 and is a significant force directing change in Brighton's creative scenes..Lucy is an intersectional feminist, mum, producer, law student & cocktail drinker. She grew up in Bristol where she formed her community-organising roots and have lived in Brighton for the last 20 years. She co-founded Quiet Down There in 2016..Alinah is an artist, writer, performer and cultural activist of British Iranian heritage. She uses text, textile, audio, and live practices to create poetic narratives that activate spaces, amplifying untold or overlooked stories. She is inaugural writer-in-residence at Seven Sisters Country Park & Sussex Heritage Coast, commissioned by the South Downs National Park Authority, and led We See You Now (2019–22), a decolonial landscape and literature programme which has produced We Hear You Now, a new spoken word audio series on Listening Points across the landscape and online until 2028.

In this episode recorded at Artlink in Hull we spoke to Jemma Brown, Sam Metz and Lydia Shearsmith..Jemma is a creative producer and a specialist working with diverse communities to plan and produce current, relevant, and inclusive artwork to engage and enlighten. She holds a First Class BA Honours in Contemporary Fine Art Practice, is an Arts and Graphics Teacher (QTLS status),  and Freelance Artist..Sam is an artist who researches, creates and reflects on the concept of what they refer to as choreographic objects. Sam has collaborated with the performance artist David Clarkson to create body-based live art, and has been a member of Guerrilla Art Lab, a queer, feminist, live art, performance collective since 2016..Lydia is an artist who is primarily concerned with exploring photography as a medium and as a subject matter. Her varied processes allow her to expand image-making into physical space, challenging common definitions of photography.. Artlink is an arts and educational charity working with under-represented people to improve prospects and deliver positive social impacts. They do this through participatory arts projects, exhibitions, events, and learning programmes - working with a range of communities. Since 1982, Artlink Hull has been involved in the development of community, participatory and socially-engaged work.

Sangini is a Black and minorities women led community arts project that is committed to ending gender based violence. They seek to improve the quality of Black and minoritised and socially excluded women's lives by increasing their physical, mental and spiritual health through artistic, heritage, crafts and social activities that helps women recover from experiences of gender based violence whilst promoting cultural diversity.Sangini seek to reach BME, disadvantaged and excluded women in innovative and creative ways whilst providing opportunities for tackling inequalities. Their previous projects have had a positive impact in encouraging women from different communities to engage in educational, creative and participatory activities by providing support and encouragement thereby removing the social and cultural barriers.https://www.sangini.co.uk/aboutPadma Rao, Director, Sangini is based in the North East of England, is also a contemporary visual artist practicing painting and contemporary drawing, a visiting lecturer, arts facilitator and a published poet.  Padma has over 20 years' experience in the arts, heritage, community development, equalities and women's issues. Padma has an art studio Makaan in South Shields, UK where she has shown works of art by artists based locally, nationally and internationally. A published poet, Padma has a background of working in the radio both at the BBC Radio Newcastle, as well as in India.  In her role at Sangini, Padma leads on the strategic development of Sangini's programme of work that includes developing partnerships and sustainability and representation of Black women's voices at local, regional and national networks.    Padma is passionate about the role and status of marginalised women in our current society and by exploring these issues through her work, both as an artist as well as in her role at Sangini, she aims to create a platform for the wider discussions around creativity, equality, feminism, identity and displacement of Black women. Nasim Akhtar is an artist living near Durham. She loves the textures of different fabrics and make textile art and patchwork quilts. She's been sewing since she was very young. She uses watercolours and acrylics to make abstract images as well as using digital manipulation to finish a piece of art. Her art work is displayed at EDAN Art Gallery in Seaham. Art ran alongside a 30 year career in Probation Services, in particular working to develop on services for women who commit crime. Writing poems and short stories helped her to record reflections and events. She has a manuscript inspired by her father's journey to the UK which shaped his family, including her. Nasim is also a member of Easignton Writers and a  local book club.  

New episode of Woman Up! On Tour!.Recorded at the Newbridge project I. Newcastle we spoke with disabled artist and drag king, incredible Lasy Kitt .Kitt works on long term, collaborativeprojects driven by insatiable curiosity about how art can be useful. Projects are usually punctuated by the creation of large-scale, vibrant installations / sites for exchange made from recycled paper,reused plastics and raw clay, which Kitt calls shrines..Kitt uses crafting, performance, joy and research to create objects, interactions and events, with the wild ambition of dismantling and mischievously re-crafting spaces and systems they find discriminatory, obsolete or just quite dull..Kitt is a trustee for Crafts Council and founding member of disabled artist led art rabble “kin collective” (North East Culture Awards “Newcomer of the Year” winner 2022)..Kitt's work has been longlisted for the 2023 Aesthetica Art Prize, shown at Atlanta Contemporary (USA), Saatchi Gallery (UK), National Centre on Restorative Justice (USA) and commissioned by Craftspace (“Drag Declares Emergency” 2022-23), Arts&Heritage (“This, our hive of voices” 2020-22) and BALTIC (‘Open. Bloom. Flourish. Nourish', 2021)..Kitt is currently working with BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (UK), AXISWEB (UK) and Centre for Artistic Activism (USA) on “(en)SHRINE”, an ACE and AHRC funded project exploring collaborative making as a catalyst for organizational development..Thank you @acegrams for making all this possible! 

In this episode we went to Rogue Artists Studios in Manchester and spoke to ecxeptional artists Laura Yuile and Anna FC Smith.Laura's multidisciplinary practice explores the entanglements between domestic and urban space through matters of community, sustainability, and obsolescence, and the effects of globalisation and technological development. She exhibits internationally and alongside gallery-based exhibitions and events, she has organised a number of projects that filter into the everyday, commercial spaces that her work is engaged with. These have included Comfort Zones - a series of symposia on the subject of comfort zones held in the showrooms of various IKEA stores through the UK and China and a bus tour to a landfill site for Global Shadow Local Mist (2014). ASSET ARREST is an ongoing project and podcast series that addresses issues of financialized housing and real estate and their impact upon communities..Anna explores social history, folk culture and ritual through historical and anthropological research. Creating sculpture, installation, performance, and group actions her works emerge as multi-dimensional symbolic collages spanning eras, and forms of material culture. Touching on politics and performative space, she examines power and community, juxtaposing the ‘low culture' and irreverence of communal tradition with the pageantry and ceremony of governance. Seeking links contemporary society has to its predecessors, she sees history and ritual as means to interpret the present.

Woman up! On Tour - Manchester Art Gallery New Episode Alert!

For our first ‘physical' On Tour episode we travelled to the Phoenix in Exeter to meet the amazing Lizzy Humber producer, artist, mother and co artistic director of the amazing Mothers Who Make movement. At the table with us we invited two artists who have been supported and empowered by the project, Amy Adkin and Dr. Kate Massey-Chase.We also hosted live performances by spoken word artists Laura Free and Micha Colombo. Mothers Who Make is a growing international movement for women and non binary people who care about creating, and create whilst caring. Through a range of peer support meetings, artistic events and innovative projects they aim to support women and non-binary people to sustain their creative identities whilst also holding caring roles.For more information https://motherswhomake.org/exeter

In this episode we talk to artist and founder of A.M.M.A.A (The Archive for Mapping Mother Artists in Asia) Ruchika Wason Singh along two other wonderful artists Alka Mathur  and Aparajita Jain Mahajan . A.M.M.A.A. simply means mother. It is also a space, for mapping mother artists in Asia and their art practice. A.M.M.A.A. is an initiative by Indian artist Ruchika Wason Singh, to document the different aspects of their art making and its possible  relations with motherhood .  https://www.ammaathearchive.com/aboutAlka Mathur is a visual artist who works with mixed media. She is an alumna of the Sir J.J School of Art, Mumbai, India. Her artistic practice entails mental reconstructions articulated as assemblages on fabric, paper and cloth. Using natural dyes, earth pigments and found objects, Alka strives to blur the line between traditional and contemporary. Nature plays a significant role in the artist's work. The contours and cracks of the parched land of her home Rajasthan, have always found their way into her relationship with material - the rustic, frayed edges which are worked over but never refined. She photographs nature and then interrupts their easy or direct readings by abstracting them into compositions of lines, planes, textures and symbols. Earth, matter and the divine feminine energy are themes which inspire and permeate her practice. The kantha or running stitch is an integral motif, representing the meditative, repetitive process analogous to the everyday rituals of women reworking old pieces of cloth. Her more recent assemblages use tea bags and tea stains on handmade paper, on which she writes a daily journal. These works are both anecdotal and autobiographical - incorporating ordinary, everyday happenings where the artist presents herself in fragments, while also encouraging the viewer to become a participant. https://www.instagram.com/alka_mathur_art/https://alkamathur.comAparajita Jain Mahajan is an abstract mixed-media artist. Through her painting, drawing, and sewing, she investigates interactions between seen and unseen forms and energies, while creating emotive topographies. The feelings of passage of time, pausing to reflect, following footprints, discovering pathways, and occupying a location are visually explored through her works. Her work rises out of flat surfaces and journeys through three-dimensional space. Aparajita has focused on her art practice while simultaneously undertaking social projects. She created animations for the Eternal Gandhi Multimedia Museum in New Delhi and assisted film maker Saeed Mirza in his tribute to Gandhiji in 2004. While Living in Auroville, a universal township, she taught art in an outreach village school and made a documentary about this special school.  Since 2009, Aparajita has exhibited her artwork at solo, two-person, and group shows.  ‘The Line in Between' at the Alliance Francaise, 2012 and ‘Interactions' at the habitat centre, 2016 in New Delhi, India were some of these exhibitions. In 2020, she debuted her textile artwork as an installation ‘Tracing Memories' in the RISD alumni show at the India Art Fair. In 2022, as part of the “Taking.Up.Space” initiative by the Thrive Together Network, Aparajita, co-created a virtual exhibition "Attachment; Abbreviated”  featuring materials that were shared, swapped, and changed between artists in opposite ends of the world. https://www.instagram.com/aparajita_atot/https://www.aparajitajainmahajan.com

Spilt Milk Gallery CIC is a social enterprise based in Edinburgh whose mission is to support the work of artists who identify as mothers, and to empower mothers in our community through artist-led activities. They support and advocate for artists mothers through an international membership network, an online and pop-up exhibitions programme, peer support, mentoring and professional development opportunities. They support mothers and families in the local community through creative workshops and family friendly events. (The term ‘mother' is used inclusively to represent women, non-binary parents and trans women with life-long caring responsibilities.)Lauren McLaughlin graduated with BA (Hons) Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in 2012, and MA Applied Arts & Social Practice from Queen Margaret University Edinburgh in 2021. Lauren's work has been exhibited throughout the UK and Europe including at the Royal Scottish Academy Edinburgh, The Whitworth Manchester, Lights of Soho London and Palazzo Albrizi Venice. Her work is held in permanent public collections and she has been published in a number of books and journals including An Artist and A Mother (Demeter Press), OVER Journal (Photo Ireland), Milked Mag, and Wordpower: Language as Medium (Library X). Lauren's practice has been publicly funded by Creative Scotland, King's College Cultural Institute, The Hope Scott Trust and most recently, Magnetic North Theatre's Seed Fund. Lauren is also the founding director of Spilt Milk Gallery CIC.http://www.laurenmclaughlin.co.ukMichelle Gallagher is a multidisciplinary artist, who's practice encompasses sculpture, printing and drawing. She completed her diploma in sculpture from Limerick school of art in Ireland. After gaining her Art & Design teaching qualifications, she followed her dream of going to Africa, and travelled to Botswana in 1997 to work as an art educator and artist. Traveling and working in Africa was inspiring, and it was in Botswana that she was involved in her first exhibitions. Michelle returned to Ireland in 2000 and finished the final year of her BA in fine art sculpture, from Limerick. Michelle has worked as an artist and educator, firstly in Ireland and Botswana, then Eastern Europe and Asia before settling in Germany. Her work has been exhibited Internationally. She is a member of the Scottish based Spilt Milk Gallery, and has had the opportunity to be part of the curatorial team for some of their recent exhibitions. Michelle joined the BBK Kunstforum Düsseldorf in 2021 and is currently working within the board curating and helping organize the community.http://www.michellegallagher.online

Pauline de Souza is the founder and director of Diversity Art Forum. She is a writer and is Senior Lecturer in the Visual Arts Cluster, Fine Art Department at the University of East London,  She, is the programmer for Cultural Manoeuvres at the University of East London and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.Pauline is involved in the Beacon Collective and sits on the TATE British Artists Network Steering Group. She has written for Feminist Visual Culture, Women Artists and Modernism, Leap into Action, for Third Text, Studio International and other publications. 

Syowia Kyambi is an interdisciplinary artist and curator whose media spans across photography, video, drawing, sound, sculpture and performance installation. She holds an MFA from Transart Institute (2020) and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2002). Syowia is based in Nairobi and of Kenyan/German origin.In Kyambi's artistic practice history collapses into the contemporary through the interventions of mischievous and disruptive interlocutory agents who interrogate the legacy of hurt inflicted by colonial projects that still frame the wider political conjuncture of now. The work is messy, complex and uneasy requiring its viewers and participants to bear witness to an embodiment of collective experiences, and a constant search for links between the now and the morphed now that is encapsulated in her work while asking important questions about what is remembered, what is archived, and how we see the world anew. She is one of the 4 members of the “What the hELL she doin!” collective. The members are all female-identifying artists from across the African continent and its Diasporas. Common to their respective practices are touchstones, which include but are not limited to: the body and what gets embodied, remembering and dismembering, standing and leaving, invisible creolization, and labor as geography.

Louise Ashcroft is an artist who makes video, performance, audio, watercolours and objects which humorously chronicle her critical meddling in  real life situations. Often, her work involves analysing cultural content (like the Argos catalogue, call centres, tech culture, the reproductive industry or breakfast cereal marketing). She has made several audio works for BBC Sounds and has spoken at leading digital arts festivals such as KIKK and Chaos Computer Congress. She has presented work at Frans Hals Museum (NL), Museum of London Lates, Wellcome Lates, BQ Berlin, Arebyte, Bobinska Brownlee, Tate Learning, Open Space Contemporary, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Artsadmin, Turf Projects, Duckie, Coastal Currents Festival, Camden People's Theatre, Supernormal Festival and Latitude Festival. She teaches Fine Art at Goldsmiths, London, and co-founded the free peer-led art school AltMFA in 2010. She likes expensive trainers and angry Marxist rhetoric.Louise says"My work looks at barriers to starting a family as a queer woman, and the personal relationships that are in play in these decisions. We need to be rethinking social structures of parenting, not always going down the ‘nuclear' style family and gender binary structures. I didn't want to be a parent or non parent in a relationship, I just want to be involved in a family! How can someone parent without being a traditional ‘having a baby' parent?Childfree by choice is a movement focused on choice, which can be problematic. Choice is a very loaded word, but is also a word that capitalism is based on. Having kids or not is not always a choice for people. Like for me, but then that means you can explore different ways to be ‘family', which can be equally exciting."Useful linkshttps://www.louiseashcroft.org/bird-hut.htmlInsta @louiseashcroft1 

Guests: - Oleksandra Kushchenko (Sasha), born in 1988 in Kharkiv, moved to Lviv in 2009. Art critic, art historian, and author of a series of lectures "(Her)story of Art" (2019) and "(Her)story of Photography" (2020) organized together with the Feminist Workshop (Lviv). Ph.D. student at the Lviv National Academy of Arts. Lecturer of the course "Visual Culture" at the Ukrainian Catholic University. Since 2014, the founder and editor of the project "ArtLvivOnline".https://www.instagram.com/sasha_kushchenko/https://www.instagram.com/artlvivonline/- Anita Nemeth, born in Khmelnytsky in 1993. Artist, curator and art historian. She studied at the Kamyanets-Podilsky National University named after Ivan Ogienko, majoring in "Restoration of works of art" (2010-2014) and at the Lviv National Academy of Arts, majoring in "History and Theory of Art" (2010-2016). Since 2019 he has lived in Lviv and worked at the Mykhailo Dzyndra Museum of Modern Sculpture. During this time she has implemented several art projects in Lviv as a curator: Pink Exhibition (2019) , Sculpture Symposium 0.1 in the Park of Culture (2020).https://instagram.com/nemetal.enterprincess?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=https://instagram.com/diogenes_gallery?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=They also have a fresh publication about calm feminism https://blokmagazine.com/silence-feminin-zine-part-iii-nobody-talks-about-this/

In this month's Woman Up! we speak to one of Britain's leading art writers Hettie Judah..Hettie is currently working on a Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition and on a book on art and motherhood. .In this episode, Hettie talks to us about both her current work on issues surrounding artists with children, and her personal experience of combining her professional career, and parenting responsibilities.  .'There were artists who'd received awards for women artists that felt like they had to ‘come out' as mothers…which is a ridiculous situation to be in. Or who were having residencies given to them and that they had to say ‘Well, I have 2 kids I can't go away for 3 months… either I have to take my kids or I have to split this up and do it in different ways.......... Nobody is there to pick up and help these people… they're just expected to fit around the needs of the gallery when actually it really costs the gallery or the institution nothing to say ‘well, can we shift this for a week? Could we shift this for a year? Would this event be easier for you if we did it at 11 am instead of 6 pm?' You know, there are all these structures that we have established in the artworld and we expect everyone to just fit around them when there are really small changes that could be made to make things a lot easier for artist parents. It just takes a little bit of thought and to ask the right questions and for people to feel empowered to declare themselves openly.'.Her most recent and upcoming books include Lapidarium (John Murray/ Penguin, 2022), How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents) (Lund Humphries, 2022), Frida Kahlo (Laurence King, 2020) and Art London (ACC Art Books, 2019). 

Dr Frances Hatherley is a writer, researcher and curator. Her writing provokes critical engagements with working-class women's subjectivities, creativities, art works, and notions of a classed-aesthetics.In 2018 she was awarded her PhD from Middlesex University titled “Sublime Dissension: A Working-Class Anti-Pygmalion Aesthetics of the Female Grotesque” examining the intersections of class and gender in the formations of grotesque, and sublime femininities in art and visual culture.She has published writing on surrealism and the subversive female grotesques of Leonora Carrington's book The Hearing Trumpet and in David and Al Measles' film Grey Gardens, and on working-class sexualities and fat femininities in characters from the comic Viz, as well as challenging stereotypes of working-class aesthetics in the photography of Richard Billingham. Other articles discuss class, sexuality, education in film and television.In 2020 She published her first book on Jo Spence, with a foreword by Marina Warner, titled Class Slippers: Jo Spence, Fantasy, Photography & Fairytales.Frances has been involved in curating several exhibitions in the UK, the first at the Pelz Gallery working with Patrizia di Bello and a group of MA students, with a show titled “Cultural Sniping: Photographic Collaborations in the Jo Spence Memorial Library” in Spring 2018. She co-curated the exhibition “Jo Spence: From Fairytales to Phototherapy” at the Arnolfini, Bristol, December 2020 – June 2021. Before Christmas, she was involved in curating the expanded film project “The Hurrier: Poor on the Roll” with Anne Robinson showing at galleries APT and Five Years, taking up topics of women, work, sexuality, and time travel.And she's currently working on her second book exploring her conception of the Anti-Pygmalion in representations of women in art and popular culture with a focus on the practices of working-class cultural workers in Britain. 

In Woman Up! Series 4 episode 2 we talked to Sasha Kanster, external affairs manager and educational projects manager for the Feminist Workshop organisation based in Lviv, Ukraine. .Sasha says ' I think a lot of people will find there is no space for art, they will need to do more practical things and feel pressure about it …. But some people also understand that art is the only way that we can deal with trauma at a collective level. I don't think we can go as a whole country to therapy! But art will allow us to work through this experience.'.For more info about their work during the war and to donate please visit: https://femwork.org/warinukraine/

In this first episode of our re-launch we interviewed Annya Sand co-founder of the WAAW London a new initiative aiming to create more representation for female artists inviting London Art's galleries and non-commercial art institutions to exclusively showcase women artists during the week of the 8th  to 15th of June.'What I try to do is to find a sustainable solution to the lack of representation of female artists... If a gallery says no to us we don't let them off the hook so easily, and I believe we have right to do so. We would ask them to exhibit female artists at another time in the year and perhaps host a talk to highlight and talk about the important of representation of female artists. We offer our platform to advertise this potential initiative throughout the year so that galleries feel encouraged to make their programme more inclusive….By improving the situation for female artists we are ultimately improving the generation that is being brought up by them, and in turn our societies mental state and outlook of what's fair and what's not' - Annya Sand

Leni Dothan is an Israeli-born artist, architect and researcher based in London, dealing with the overlooked representations of women – especially mothers – in art history and contemporary culture. Through the prism of a mother to a boy, a foreigner in the West, she creates sculptures, photographs, videos and installations that suggest new narratives other than the perfect and ideal mother-and-child relationship. Dothan completed her MFA and PhD at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Leni also works collaboratively with scientists to raise awareness on eco-political subjects and environmental issues. Dothan presents her work around the world in galleries and museums and she is represented by MTArt Agency. Leni has also shown her work 'Mine'(2012) and 'Double'(2015) at the Desperate Artwives 'The M Word' exhibition at One Paved Court gallery in 2019. 

Lauren Craig (She/her/hers) is a social-media shy, internet-curious cultural futurist based in London. Her practice draws on her experiences as an artist, curator, researcher, birth/death doula and celebrant. She has founded and directed five creative organisations with a background in ethical, social and environmental entrepreneurship and reproductive justice. Her practice moves with slow depth between performance, installation, art writing, moving image and photography. Through archival socialisation, she elevates lived experience as a tool for reframing past and present underexposed narratives. Through collaborative live engagement Craig invites us to presence conditions for ethical cultural memory.Craig's current project Rendering Experience takes a revisionist approach to Maud Sulter's book Passion: Discourses on Blackwomen's Creativity (1990), investigating the art historical legacy, impact and potential curatorial futures inspired by this formative yet overlooked text. Passion has featured in previously co-curated exhibitions The Rita Keegan Archive (Project) (RKAP) at South London Gallery, (2020) Show and Tell, The Women's art Library (2015). Forthcoming works, publications and events include collaborations with Feminist Review, Photofusion, Eastside Projects, The Womens' Art Library and Arts Catalyst. She is a member of RKAP, a social history and curatorial collective whose activities include the publication Mirror Reflecting Darkly, MIT Press and Goldsmiths May 2021 and exhibition Between There and Here at South London Gallery in September 2021 and.She has an MA in Enterprise and Management for Creative Arts from the University of the Arts London. Craig will continue her practice-based research as part of Syllabus VI 2020/21 and the Royal College of Art 2021/22.Edits:1) Lauren mentions the British Art Network initially (around the 13:17min mark and again at 19:07min), but then referred to them ongoing as British Artwork, rather than the complete title British Art Network. 2)  At 13:07 and 13:36 when Lauren mentions "Women's Work Project", she meant to say "Group Work in the Women's Art Library"

Felicity Allen is a British artist and writer who makes paintings, books and films, often collaboratively. Her current work is mainly focussed on two durational projects. For one she is developing her concept of the Disoeuvre (as a feminist alternative to conventional ideas of an artist's oeuvre); for the other she produces series of Dialogic Portraits. She has just completed her most recent Dialogic Portraits project, including her film Figure to Ground: a site losing its system (trailer: https://vimeo.com/527359904), with the cross-disciplinary research project People Like You: Contemporary Figures of Personalisation https://peoplelikeyou.ac.uk/ . Her current work on the Disoeuvre involves a study group with the Women's Art Library archive at Goldsmiths. She outlined the concept in her PhD (2016), since when she has made a film and a series of prints, as well as the artists book The Disoeuvre: an Argument in 4 Voices (WASL Table); 6:27, (Ma Bibliothèque, 2019).She continues to work with the literary, activist, walking organisation Refugee Tales https://www.refugeetales.org/ , for whom she made Dialogic Portraits postcards last summer when Lockdown made mass walking impossible. Recent exhibitions of her work have been at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; x-hibit, Vienna; and Resort, Margate. For most of her working life Felicity has been involved in informal and higher education and, having run the education department at Tate Britain, published a series of articles on gallery education, and edited the Whitechapel/MIT Documents of Contemporary of Art book Education (2012). For more info see www.felicityallen.co.ukHer photographic work, Baby II, is currently on show in the Ikon Gallery's exhibition A Very Special Place: Ikon in the 1990s. 

Desperate Artwives Woman Up! podcast takeover Stopping the Fucking Wheel.Original broadcasted live at the Missing Mother conference (University of Bolton, UK) on Friday 23rd April 2021.Missing Mother conference in collaboration with Desperate Artwives present a special ‘takeover' woman up! episode in the form of a semi structured panel talk discussion focused on the development and continued need for women led platforms and organizations supporting artists who are also mothers and carers over the past 10 years.Panellists: Martina Mullaney (Enemies of Good Art), Amy Dignam (Desperate Artwives), Paula McCloskey (A placeSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 3, takeover episode. ‘Stopping the Fucking Wheel' – Desperate Artwives takeover The Missing Mother Conference appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

Woman Up! Special Episode ‘An Urgent Response’Shira Richter  –  ‘The Conflict in the Middle East, a Mothernist Perspective’Due to the current terrorising and violent  situation in the middle east we have decided to make an urgent response woman up episode and offered Shira Richter, old time friend, colleague, supporter and also collaborator of our project, a safe space to talk openly about everyday life in Israel right now, as she experiences it. A life under both external and internal violence, a life of being hyper-vigilant and of being on edgeSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 3, Special Episode ‘An Urgent Response’ – Shira Richter ‘The conflict in the Middle East, a Mothernist perspective’ appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

Woman Up! Series 3, episode 4. Megan Wynne  –  ‘The Body as a Site for Mothering and Art’Megan Wynne is a conceptual artist based in Chesapeake, Virginia who investigates of maternal mental health, ambivalence, the shifting power dynamic of the mother-child relationship, and prevailing notions of what embodies a “good” mother.Using her body as a site to explore the innate interdependence and vulnerability of mother and child, her process involves the act of relinquishing control in experimental collaborative per- formative scenarios with her three children. These ideas are expressed in often-convergingSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 3, episode 4 – Megan Wynne ‘The Body as a Site for Mothering and Art’ appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

Woman Up! Series 3, episode 3. Ruchika Wason Singh  – ‘Mapping Mother Artists in Asia’ Ruchika Wason Singh is a visual artist, art educator and independent researcher based in Delhi. She has widely exhibited in South -East Asia and also participated in international artist residency programs. Ruchika has been a U.G.C doctoral research fellow at the University of Delhi. In 2016 she initiated A.M.M.A.A.- The Archive for Mapping Mother Artists in Asia. She is also involved in organising alternative art activities at Critical Dialogues Art Space, Delhi. Ruchika has been an AssociateSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 3, episode 3 – Ruchika Wason Singh appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

Woman Up! Series 3, episode 2. Nicola Hunter – CENSORSHIP, BODIES and VULNERABILITY Artist and activist, Nicola Hunter was born in north east England (UK), began their path in fine arts and has since been performing and showing work nationally and internationally for over a decade. Hunter has seen international success as founder of intersectional feminist project Raising the Skirt and continues to develop a queer feminist arts and photographic practice, which is rooted in action based performance and spans live work, documentations of its products & traces and the re-presentation ofSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 3, episode 2 – Nicola Hunter appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

Woman Up! Series 3, episode 1. Jodie Hawkes – MOTHER TROUBLE MAKERS Jodie is one half of performance duo Search Party. Formed in 2005 Search Party’s work has encompassed theatre, live art, durational performance, participatory art, home video and performative writing.  Search Party have made performances for theatres, galleries, public squares, 24-hour parties, high streets, village fetes, parks, shopping centres, across rivers, between bridges and along seafronts. Jodie is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre at the University of Chichester. Her research Playing Kate focuses on maternal performance and class.http://searchpartyperformance.org.uk/  https://www.playingkate.coFor subtitled version   The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 3, episode 1 – Jodie Hawkes ‘Mother Trouble Makers’ appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

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The Guerrilla Girls are anonymous artist activists who use disruptive headlines, outrageous visuals and killer statistics to expose gender and ethnic bias and corruption in art, film, politics and pop culture. They believe in an intersectional feminism that fights for human rights for all people and all genders. They undermine the idea if a mainstream narrative by revealing the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair. Guerrilla Girls: The Art of Behaving Badly is the first book to document their hundreds of street projects all over the world asSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 2, Episode 13 Christmas Special – Guerrilla Girls appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

PART 2Jennie Klein is a professor of art history at Ohio University. She is the co-editor, along with Myrel Chernick, of The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art, published in 2011. In 2014 she and Chernick chaired TFAP@CAA Day of Panels, which was also themed around maternity and motherhood. She has recently published several essay on art and the maternal, including “Feminist Art and Motherhood: An Overview,” in The Routledge Companion to Motherhood, “Maternal Metaphors I and II: a labor of motherlove” in The Maternal in Creative Work, bothSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 2, Episode 12, Part 2 – Jennie Klein appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

Jennie Klein is a professor of art history at Ohio University. She is the co-editor, along with Myrel Chernick, of The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art, published in 2011. In 2014 she and Chernick chaired TFAP@CAA Day of Panels, which was also themed around maternity and motherhood. She has recently published several essay on art and the maternal, including “Feminist Art and Motherhood: An Overview,” in The Routledge Companion to Motherhood, “Maternal Metaphors I and II: a labor of motherlove” in The Maternal in Creative Work, both co-authoredSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 2, Episode 12, Part 1 – Jennie Klein appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

Emma’s work often focusses on honesty, action and a playfully destructive DIY aesthetic using materials with different transformative properties – such as water, clay, earth, salt and ink – to create strong visual imagery which is often messy, intense and celebratory. In recent years, her work has been focussed on the None of Us is Yet a Robot project, a series of performance pieces recently published by Oberon Books as “None of Us is Yet a Robot – Five Performances on Gender Identity and the Politics of Transition”.In 2013 EmmaSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 2, Episode 11 – Emma Frankland appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

Shirley Cameron is an artist whose work covers 6 decades.Shirley studied sculpture at Central Saint Martins College with Anthony Caro as her tutor’ Whilst studying there Shirley met Roland Miller, who at that time was travelling with The People Show theatre company.For almost 20 years they travelled together becoming principal figures in the development of Performance Art in British alternative theatre between 1968 and 1988. Cameron was one of the first artists to include her children in  her work. in 1977, she performed ‘Washing the Twins’ at the IV InternationalSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 2, Episode 10 – Shirley Cameron appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

Hermione Wiltshire studied Sculpture at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, at BA level followed by an MA at Chelsea School of Art. In 1993, Hermione Wiltshire was a Momart Fellow at the Tate Gallery Liverpool, where she spent six months carrying out a residency followed by an exhibition at the Tate gallery Liverpool called Elective Affinities. She was also a scholar at the British School of Rome and returned often to Rome and Naples to complete several major series of works. Hermione is a Senior Lecturer in theSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 2, Episode 9 – Hermione Wiltshire appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

Through leading seminars, curating panels, and consulting services, Women Picturing Revolution (WPR) co-creators Lesly Deschler Canossi and Zoraida Lopez-Diago are reclaiming and retelling history in a manner that is both radical and necessary. By highlighting the work of female photographers who have documented conflicts, crises, and revolution in private realms and public spaces, WPR sheds light on personal and political experiences that are often overlooked or underrepresented. From fine art photography made as a response to forced silence, oppression, and the inability to act, to well-known visual journalists documenting upheaval, Lesly and Zoraida, along withSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 2, Episode 8 – Women Picturing Revolution appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

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[md_text md_text_title1=”pixflow_base64IA==” md_text_title_separator=”no”]In Episode 6  we have invited artist Melissa Mostyn to join our monthly chat.Melissa has enjoyed a portfolio career as an artist, writer and film-maker for over twenty years, adopting a variety of roles for Shape, Maverick Television, Disability Arts Online, Deafnitely Theatre, Architecture Week South- East, Tate and V&A. Before having children, for five years Melissa led a groundbreaking Deaf visual art project, Salon, funded by Arts Council England and the Esme Fairbairn Foundation, and had journalism published in The Independent, Esquire and Vogue. Since becoming aSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 2, Episode 6 – Melissa Mostyn appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

 For subtitled version please see belowImage Credits:1. Great & Tiny War, Bobby Baker, 2018. Image © Daily Life Ltd.  2. Ordinary Heaven, Bobby Baker, 2018, part of Great & Tiny War (Room 2, 1915 / 2015). Photo by Andrew Whittuck, 2018  3. Britannia, Bobby Baker, 2018, part of Great & Tiny War (Room 1, 1914 / 2014). Photo by Andrew Whittuck, 20184. An Edible Family in a Mobile Home, Bobby Baker, Stepney, London, 1976. Photo by Andrew Whittuck, 19765. Displaying the Sunday Dinner, Bobby Baker, 1998. Photo by Andrew Whittuck.6. Photographic documentationSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 2, Episode 5 – Bobby Baker appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

  On this month Woman Up! Podcast we talk to Nydia Blas/Nydia Boyd. Nydia is a visual artist who grew up in Ithaca, New York and currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia. She lives with her husband and two children.  Nydia uses photography, collage, video, and books to address matters of sexuality, intimacy, and her lived experience as a girl, woman, and mother. She delicately weaves stories concerning circumstance, value, and power and uses her work to create a physical and allegorical space presented through a Black feminine lens. Nydia’s use of what sheSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 2, Episode 4 – Nydia Blas appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

Amanda Bintu Holiday considers herself an accidental poet having been an artist and then filmmaker for much of her life. Born in Sierra Leone, shge moved to the UK at the age of five. After studying Fine Arts at Wimbledon she exhibited in landmark black art shows across the UK in the 1980s before moving into film – directing experimental shorts for the Arts Council, BFI and Channel 4. Between 2001 and 2010 she lived in Cape Town where she worked in educational TV.For subtitles see below.Virginia Chihota – TestimonySEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Series 2, Episode 3 – Amanda Holiday appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

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It is with immense pleasure that  we present you with this year 13th and last Woman Up! podcast  introducing Professor Jaqueline Rose. Jaqueline Rose is a Co-Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and Director of the London Critical Theory Summer School.She is internationally known for her writing on feminism, psychoanalysis, literature and the politics and ideology of Israel-Palestine.  Her books include Sexuality in the Field of Vision (1986, Verso Radical Thinkers, 2006), The Haunting of Sylvia Plath (1991), States of Fantasy (1996), The Question of Zion (2005), The Last Resistance (2007), Proust Among the Nations – from Dreyfus toSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Episode 13 – Jaqueline Rose appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

 Helen Sargeant is an artist and mother of two sons, she lives and works from home and her studio in West Yorkshire. Helen’s practice includes autobiographical writing, drawings, painting, performance and time based media. Her work has been published in books and journals and she has presented her work at international conferences. She makes work about the maternal body and her experiences of mothering. Her work aims to challenge idealised representations of the mother and make visible their caring work. Through her arts practice she also aims to communicate with honesty the complexitiesSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Episode 12 – Helen Sargeant appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

 In the 11th episode of Woman up! we speak to Eti Wade who speaks candidly about the depression behind her work, her time out of practice and feelings of confidence as an artist and mother.Eti Wade is an artist and academic specialising in photography.She was the programme leader for the MA Photography at the University of West London and her photographic practice is a personal investigation of the limits of maternal subjectivity expressed through photography and video and she has also written on the subject of the maternal gaze inSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Episode 11 – Eti Wade appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

Lena Simic is a performance practitioner, scholar and pedagogue, born in Dubrovnik, Croatia, living in Liverpool. A co-organizer of The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home and Reader in Drama at Edge Hill University, UK.Lena is an artist/scholar who is engaged in researching maternal performance, children in performance, critical arts practice and art activism. Lena’s recent ‘Arts Projects and Performances’ include Manifesto for Maternal Performance (Art) 2016! (with Emily Underwood-Lee, SC Gallery, Zagreb; Royal College of Art, London, Astrid Noack’s Atelier, Copenhagen, 2017); Who wants another baby? video film (Centre for Culture in NoviSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Episode 9 – Dr.Lena Simic appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

 Amanthi Harris was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in London. She studied Fine Art at Central St Martins and has degrees in Law and Chemistry from Bristol University. Her novel BEAUTIFUL PLACE is published by Salt (September 2019). LANTERN EVENING, a novella, won the Gatehouse Press New Fictions Prize 2016 and is published by Gatehouse Press (2017). Her short stories have been published by Serpent’s Tail and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as Afternoon Readings. She also runs STORYHUG an ACE-funded storytelling, art and writing project.Website: www.amanthiharris.com https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/beautiful-place-9781784631932 http://www.gatehousepress.com/shop/new-fictions/lantern-evening/To viewSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Episode 8 – Amanthi Harris appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

In this 7th episode we talk to a pioneer of feminist art in 1970 – Su Richardson.  Known for her involvement in the Postal Art Event (which went by several names) and her soft sculptural work Burnt Breakfast (1975.) Su chats to us  about her home-made objects, domesticity, femininity and about her decision to leave the art business to be involved with a punk rock band( http://www.gigslutz.co.uk/interview-terry-gerry/).For subtitled version please follow this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVi2rv1GbW4 The post Woman UP! Podcast Episode 7 – Su Richardson appeared first on Desperate Artwives.

This month on Woman up! we talk to Rose Gibbs. Rose is a feminist artist and writer who regularly initiates and contributes to talks, symposiums and discussions, including Who’s Holding the Baby? at Tate Britain. She is co-founder of a number of collectives and collaborative projects and has worked with The East London Fawcett Group and Hackney’s SERA group. She has curated exhibitions and shown work at the ICA, The Showroom amongst others art spaces. She is particularly interested in the gender implications of care work, she runs a smallSEE DETAILS The post Woman UP! Podcast Episode 6 – Rose Gibbs appeared first on Desperate Artwives.