Portfolio: Jo Spence. BP Spotlight at Tate Britain

14/12/15
Portfolio: Jo Spence

BP Spotlight: Jo Spence
Tate Britain
until autumn 2016

Published in the January 2016 print issue of DIVA magazine

Review of Liberties at Collyer Bristow Gallery

16/09/15

Liberties

Collyer Bristow Gallery
2 July – 21 October 2015

The year 1975 was a landmark one for women around the world. It was declared by the United Nations to be International Women’s Year, and, in the UK, it saw the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act and the Employment Protection Act (making statutory maternity pay a requirement for employers and legislating against dismissal on the grounds of pregnancy). Since then, things have continued to improve in the UK: in 1976, the Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act was introduced; in 1979, Margaret Thatcher was elected as Britain’s first female prime minister; in 1987, Julie Hayward, a canteen cook at a Liverpool shipyard, became the first woman to win a case under the amended Equal Pay Act; and in 1992 Betty Boothroyd MP became the first female Speaker in the House of Commons. There is still much to be fought for to achieve full equality, however, and the creation of such projects as Million Women Rise (2007) and the Everyday Sexism Project (2012) is testament to this. This year has seen the founding of the UK Women’s Equality Party by broadcaster Sandi Toksvig and author and journalist Catherine Mayer. 

Given this unsatisfactory status quo, the curatorial duo Day+Gluckman (Lucy Day and Eliza Gluckman) wanted to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a pivotal year, but also to provoke and encourage continued attempts at revolution and radical transformation. As Alexandra M Kokoli notes in an essay to accompany the exhibition,1 “feminist accounts of the past first emerged as feminist responses to gaps in historical narratives”. The curation of this show follows what the Dutch cultural theorist Mieke Bal has called a “preposterous history”, whereby contemporary artworks quote or allude to past artworks, “put[ting] what came chronologically first (‘pre’) as an aftereffect behind (‘post’) its later recycling”.2 This is exemplified in Jessica Voorsanger’s Claude Monet (Bald Series) (2013), where a woman is seen adorned with the artist’s iconic beard; Rose English’s Baroque Harriet 2 and 3 (1973) where women are seen reclining on a chaise longue and posed in a frame, but wrapped up respectively in a duvet and a large bow, destroying the traditional gaze, by offering them some modesty; and EJ Major’s series investigating the axe attack on Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus by suffragette Mary Richardson in 1914.

Read the rest of this review here

Review of Photoworks Annual Issue 20

23/12/13

Photoworks: Photography, Art, Visual Culture

Issue 20

Family Politics

Photoworks, the National Portfolio Organisation, supported by the Arts Council England, curates exhibitions, commissions new work, and runs events, including the Brighton Photo Biennial. In addition, for the past 10 years, it has been producing a biannual magazine, showcasing new writing and photographic commissions. This autumn has seen issue 20 expand into the new format of a heftier annual tome: a 256 page catalogue filled to the brim with works by both new and established photographers and insights and discussions presented by writers on the subject. At heart, Photoworks has always been about commissioning new work, says Director and Co-Editor, Celia Davies, and so this larger platform really takes the organisation back to its roots, providing time and space for just this. In addition, the newly adopted thematic approach – this time Family Politics – provides a focus for debate and a central idea to which contributors can respond.

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.photomonitor.co.uk/2013/12/family-politics-2/

Review of Alexis Hunter & Jo Spence at Richard Saltoun

27/08/13

Alexis Hunter & Jo Spence

Richard Saltoun

22 August – 27 September 2013

“We need to use our cameras, tape recorders, diaries, poems, videos – whatever cultural resources we have – to witness our own histories, to learn to protest and share, and to learn to nurture ourselves.”*

When Jo Spence (1934-1992) and Alexis Hunter (born 1948) exhibited together in the 1970s, feminist art was in its heyday and both artists had recently begun to use photography as a means to explore identity, comment upon and criticise society, and bring about change. Spence, herself from a working class background, was particularly interested in exploring cultural and class stereotypes, whilst Hunter immersed herself fully in the women’s movement and produced works questioning gender roles. Inevitably, however, Spence’s work has also been seen, much discussed, and academically pontificated upon from this angle. Both artists use portraiture and self-representation playfully and unsettlingly to tell stories, create narratives, make their viewers cringe, feel shame, feel guilt, and relate – at the level of the id, there is something in each of these artist’s strips of snapshot-style photographs or basic contact sheets where any and every woman can find herself.

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.divamag.co.uk/category/arts-entertainment/art-review-alexis-hunter-jo-spence.aspx