Women in Revolt

It's a two-posting night, and if I wasn't missing (much to my regret) a screening of short music documentaries this evening, there would be three.

Oh this exhibition! There is so much to see, lots of it art, lots of it political expression, lots of it both. There is such treasure! 

I started off by going into Bobby Baker's prefab to inspect her family of cakes. There weren't a lot of people around yet (this was a press day) and so we had a really nice chat. It transpires that she knew Helen Chadwick, and that Helen did a really great job of supporting Bobby earlier on in her career. Good. Helen was a dude.

In the main gallery, I bumped in to Everett True, Billy Reeves and Cassie Fox, who had brought a bunch of students down to see the exhibition. Samira Ahmed arrived and we went around the exhibition separately, although she was so delighted by the photographs of Shirley Cameron, pregnant with twins and dressed as a bunny girl and guerilla-exhibiting herself amongst the real rabbits at agricultural shows, that she pulled me over to see them!

There were some really humorous articulations of fury here.There is a short film of Linder in her meat dress, singing a great song, then revealing a giant phallus as she rips her dress off- apparently inspired by Buck's Fizz's similar disrobement at the Eurovision Song Contest!

The Marxist Wife Still Does the Housework byAlexis Hunter also has a humorous spin- a series of photos of Karl Marx being dusted, with the word 'Man' being smeared in the final frame.

The overwhelming feeling in the first room- and also parts of the others- was of the value of ready-reachable, cheap, accessible materials. There were tons of pamphlets, zines and mags full of collaborative content. I particularly felt an affinity for the postal art project of Femisto, where a group of women artists, fed up with being ignored by an impossible-to-penetrate (sic) male art community, decided to post each other small pieces of art on a regular basis. What a catalyst this exhibition is going to be.

There was art by many people I knew here: Jini Rawlings (who I used to work with), Suzy Varty (who I've been in comics with), Roshini Kempadoo (who taught at a University where I once taught), Gina Birch whose 3-minute scream is at the very heart of the show; Caroline Coon and Helen Chadwick, of course. Black and South Asian artists are well represented, and Lubiana Hamid's life size racist white man with weapon dog (I can't remember the name, but I'll find it) was a chilling articulation of how it feels to be a black woman in a racist white neighbourhood.

This is a very truthful and emotionally-wrenching exhibition. The series of photographs of women who worked in a metal box factory alongside their daily schedules shows just how harsh life can be for women. There are no angels here, and there's very little artifice. Lots of the work is literal, and all the more powerful for it. I was there for three hours and didn't even manage to take in the films (apart from Linder's).

Here were very many examples of group activism, exhibited alongside individual statements, curated as a massive and powerful collective statement of twenty years of campaigning. I know everyone who sees this will have a personal internal discussion about this period of time. Greenham Common looms large, yet I didn't go at the time. I'd find it hard to explain why not, but I didn't.

I came away buzzing with ideas, went home for a few hours then to Front Row (link in earlier posting). Then, believe it or not, I dropped into Ian Damage's packed 60th birthday celebration at the 100 Club, where I bumped into Dec Hickey who I haven't seen for yonks.

This morning I did a podcast interview which I'll post a link to as soon as it's ready. And this afternoon, the plaster came. He's just sweeping up now. The heating has been off so I'm swathed in woollies. What a busy few days it has been.