Group Work in the Women’s Art Library

Speakers: Dr Althea Greenan (Women’s Art Library curator)
Lauren Craig and Gina Nembhard (members of X Marks the Spot)

2-5pm, Friday March 6^th 2020

Women’s Art Library, Special Collections, Rutherford Building, Goldsmiths, Lewisham Way, New Cross, London, SE14 6NW

This workshop will be led by Althea Greenan, archivist of the Women’s Art Library, along with Lauren Craig and Gina Nembhard. As members of X Marks the Spot, an art and archive research collective, Craig and Nembhard have explored the Women of Colour Index held at the Women’s Art Library, as well as the Jo Spence archive.

Workshop members will examine material in the Women’s Art Library and consider how archivists, artists and activists have sought to creatively engage with the collection. The workshop will ask key questions about how to approach collaborative practice through its archival traces.

The Women’s Art Library is a unique collection of material on women artists, with a growing programme of creative interventions by artists, curators, writers and archivists.

You will need to join the British Art Network sub-group “Group Work: Contemporary Art and Feminism” to attend. Please let us know if you are not already a member and we will forward your details. BAN members can claim travel expenses for attending. We also have four travel bursaries of £50 each for early career scholars, funded by the Association for Art History. Please email groupworknetwork@gmail.com to attend the workshop, or get more details.

This workshop is funded by the Association for Art History, the British Art Network and Goldsmiths Art Department Research Support Award. It is organised by Catherine Grant (Goldsmiths), Amy Tobin (University of Cambridge) and Rachel Warriner (Courtauld Institute of Art).

Group Work Seminar: Professor Juliet Mitchell in conversation with Professor Mignon Nixon

Professor Juliet Mitchell will discuss “Siblings, Their Heirs and Others on the Social, Horizontal Axis”, presenting a short paper followed by a conversation with Professor Mignon Nixon.

Thursday 21^st November, 5.30 – 7.00pm

Lucia Windsor Room, Newnham College, University of Cambridge,Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 9DF, UK

This seminar is part of the research project “Group Work: Contemporary Art and Feminism”, which explores the legacies and histories of group work in art since the 1970s, with a focus on feminist practices. Organised by Catherine Grant (Goldsmiths), Amy Tobin (Cambridge), and Rachel Warriner (Courtauld Institute of Art).

Supported by the Centre for Visual Culture, University of Cambridge.

Call for Participation: Group Work seminar

“Group Work: Contemporary Art and Feminism” is a research project that explores the legacies and histories of group work in art since the 1970s, with a focus on feminist practices. Questions under consideration include: what would a (feminist) art history look like if it refused to tell a history of individual artists? And how did the collectivity inherent in much feminist organising in the 1970s and 1980s feed into artistic practice? This project is in its early stages of formation, with a focus on thinking through the legacies of consciousness-raising in art, as well as other political group work that intersect with feminist politics, including the peace movement, anti-racist and women of colour activism, and lesbian, gay and transgender activism.

As part of this project, scholars of all levels are invited to join a seminar group that will meet once a term to discuss topics under the Group Work theme. The first meeting will take place at the Courtauld Institute of Art on the 28^th June 2019, and will be followed by three seminars at the University of Cambridge, Goldsmiths and the Courtauld in the academic year 2019-20. After this first year, there will be a chance to assess the format and duration of the seminar.

Applications are welcome from scholars engaged in art historical writing. To apply, please write a 300 word proposal on the topic you would like to develop over the course of the seminar. Topics are welcome from all geographical contexts and periods, although the emphasis will be on feminist-influenced art practices from the 1970s onwards. There will be an exploration of UK feminist communities and connections between the UK and the US in the initial series of events that will take place alongside the seminar group meetings, drawing on expertise from the Centre for American Art at the Courtauld and the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths. We are exploring possibilities of funding that focuses attention on the UK, but then links beyond this geographical context.  

This research project is being developed by Catherine Grant (Goldsmiths), Amy Tobin (Cambridge) and Rachel Warriner (Courtauld). The three project partners will be exploring funding possibilities, so with your application please indicate: what travel funds you would need to attend seminars in London and Cambridge; whether you are able to attend all four seminar meetings. For the first event at the Courtauld  on 28^thJune 2019, there is funding for early career researchers to cover travel expenses upto £50 per person.

Deadline for applications: 24 May 2019. Please send a CV, covering letter and 300 word proposal detailing the research topic to be developed over the course of the seminar. Please also give details of funding needed for travel, where necessary (see above for details). Applications should be sent to: groupworknetwork@gmail.com

UN/COMMON RITUAL

The Courtauld Institute of Art, Vernon Square, Penton Rise, King’s Cross, London

Wednesday 29 May 2019
5:00 pm – 7:00 pm

This event focuses on Barbara McCullough’s pioneering short film Water Ritual 1: An Urban Rite of Purification (1979) including a screening of the film. Rizvana Bradley (History of Art and African-American Studies, Yale University) will give a presentation on the work, introducing its themes and ideas. This will be followed by a conversation with Amy Tobin (Kettle’s Yard and History of Art, University of Cambridge) which will consider its relationship to feminism, collectivity, and ecology.

This will be the second event of the Group Work Network which considers the ways in which collectivity and collaboration supports practice. It is kindly sponsored by the Centre for American Art, Courtauld Institute of Art. Group Work events are co-organised by Catherine Grant, Amy Tobin and Rachel Warriner.

Rizvana Bradley is Assistant Professor of the History of Art and African-American Studies at Yale University. She received her PhD from Duke University, B.A. from Williams College, and participated in the Whitney Independent Study program. Bradley’s research intersects with anticolonial politics, feminist and gender studies, continental philosophy, postcolonial theory, and aesthetic theory. Her forthcoming book manuscript was awarded a Creative Capital Arts Writer’s Grant, and other writing appears in: Film Quarterly, Black Camera, TDR: The Drama Review, Women and Performance, Parkett, and Art in America. She has contributed to catalogues for the New Museum, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, ICA Philadelphia, Art Basel, the Berlin Biennale, and Whitechapel Gallery, London.

Amy Tobin is Lecturer in the Department of History of Art at the University of Cambridge and Curator at Kettle’s Yard. Her PhD research focused on art and feminism in Britain and North America in the 1970s, and particularly at group work and collaboration between women. Her research has been published in British Art Studies, MIRAJ and Tate Papers and in books including Other Cinemas: Politics, Culture and Experimental Film in the 1970s (IB Tauris, 2017), Feminism and Art History Now (IB Tauris, 2017), The Art of Feminism (Chronicle and Tate, 2018) and A Companion to Feminist Art (Blackwell, 2019). In 2017 she wrote and edited 14 Radnor Terrace: A Woman’s Place for the exhibition 56 Artillery Lane at Raven Row in London, this year her co-edited book (with Jo Applin and Catherine Spencer) London Art Worlds: Mobile, Contingent and Ephemeral Networks was published by Pennsylvania State University Press. She is currently working on a book on feminism, art and sisterhood.

This event is free and open to all. Located at the Research Forum Seminar Room, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Vernon Square, Penton Rise, King’s Cross, London, WC1X 9EW

Organised by Dr Catherine Grant – Goldsmiths, Dr Amy Tobin – Kettle’s Yard and Cambridge University, Dr Rachel Warriner – The Courtauld Institute of Art

Group Work: Contemporary Art and Feminism

Group Work: Contemporary Art and Feminism is a collaboration initiated by Dr Catherine Grant (Goldsmiths), Dr Amy Tobin (University of Cambridge) and Dr Rachel Warriner (Courtauld Institute of Art). With a focus on feminist practice, this research network examines the significance of group work, through a range of events in order to consider the implications of approaching the art world from the point of view of the relationships, collaborations and networks that support artistic production, display and reception.