'If this lady was a car she’d run you down'
Women in Revolt! at the Whitworth Art Gallery | Latest NW arts news | Opening this week
Here are some of the things I want to go away and find out more about after visiting the Whitworth’s exhibition Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990:
Don’t Do It Di: A campaign to persuade the future Princess Diana not to marry Prince (now King) Charles.
The artist Maureen Scott, whose painting Mother and Child at Breaking Point perfectly sums up the mental and physical exhaustion you sometimes feel as a mum to a toddler.
Depo-Provera: A contraception injection predominantly given to Black and working class women in Britain (I feel like I should have known about this before).
Lenthall Road Workshop: A community screen-printing workshop in London with the ethos “once you start seeing yourself as a person who can do things then you’re in a position to take control of your life”.
I love when an exhibition leaves you, not only with plenty to think about, but with a trail of breadcrumbs to other interesting things. I’ve discovered so much this way: The books of Paul Auster referenced in a Sophie Calle exhibition while I was a student in Paris; the French Republican Calendar - which named every date in the year after a seed, tree, flower, fruit, animal or tool - through Radical Landscapes at Tate Liverpool in 2022; the three Sisters way of growing crops at last year’s Harewood Biennial.
What trails of breadcrumbs have you been tempted to follow recently?
Many battles won but we’re still screaming
It’s rare that a curator shares their intensely personal reasons for putting together an exhibition, so when that happens it’s worth taking note. In fact, Linsey Young, the independent curator behind Women in Revolt! at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, has three strong motivations that lead to this two-decade survey of feminist art and activism in the UK.
Firstly, there is her mum - “a single mum, she was a nurse, she was funny, she was brilliant” - who Young believes was given a late cancer diagnosis because she wasn’t taken seriously by a male doctor. Thanks to the 1995 State Pension Act, she died before she started receiving her pension, in one of “those injustices small and large that just infiltrate women's everyday lives”.
“That post-war generation of women who people think are ordinary or kind of boring - they're not seen. But actually they hold up everything in our community. They're our teachers, they are our physics professors and our nurses and all of those things in between,” says Young, who grew up in a socialist family where she saw women “running everything” and was surprised when she got to work that men were telling her what to do.
“It was really amazing to me that they thought they had any agency, but of course they do and it really gets in our way,” she adds.
The second reason was the culture shock she experienced while working at Tate, where she found many people were privately educated, and the collection barely represented the artists she was interested in and the stories she wanted to tell: “Queer work or work by people of colour.”
Women in Revolt! was first shown at Tate Britain (this incarnation at the Whitworth is the first time it’s been free to visit), where of the 350 art works and 350 archival pieces on display just 11 came from Tate's collection: “That is how overlooked by the establishment this work is.”
Finally, there was the realisation that despite her job title being curator of contemporary British art, Young’s own knowledge was skewed, thanks to her studies, to white male British art. Curating this show has therefore been a journey of discovery for Young - and so it is for visitors, who can’t help but be initially overwhelmed by the large numbers of artists, styles, media and political causes filling the gallery space.
Running chronologically, it starts with the 1970 National Women’s Liberation Conference at a time when there was no Equal Pay Act, no statutory maternity rights or sex-discrimination protection, and married women were still the legal dependents of their husbands. The dull-eyed gaze and resigned, motionless posture of the woman in Maureen Scott’s oil painting Mother and Child at Breaking Point - in contrast to her toddler’s entire body in motion, torso-arched, head flung back, mouth wide open in a wail - demonstrates the sometimes repressive exhaustion of motherhood. Yet its very existence is a protest - a drawing-to-attention of the conflicting emotions of being a mum.
Ferocity is everywhere in this exhibition - ferocity and determination, miraculous determination really, given the size of the battle and its ability to grind you down. There are works representing the Wages for Housekeeping campaign, which argued capitalism was dependent upon women’s unpaid work; the fight for free contraceptive pills and against the unsafe use of Depo-Provera contraceptive injections; the British Black Art Movement and the Disability Arts Movement; protests against Section 28 and much more.
Margaret Harrison’s Greenham Common (Common Reflection) 1989-2013 recreates a section of the barbed wire fence covered in children’s clothes, photographs and household items. Jill Posener’s photographs document feminist interventions to billboards around the capital, including If This Lady Was a Car, London 1979: An advert for a Fiat 127 Palio that reads, “If it were a lady, it would get its bottom pinched”. Spray-painted across it is “If this lady was a car she’d run you down.”
Meanwhile, in her 1977 video 3 Minute Scream, Gina Birch fills an entire Super 8 film cartridge with her high-pitched screaming.
There are many works by North West artists included, such as Red Riding Hood by Amanda Holiday, who grew up in Wigan before becoming involved in the British Black Arts Movement; a photomontage by Liverpool-born Linder; Lubaina Himid’s The Carrot Piece, a 2D sculpture showing a white man using a carrot on a string to tempt a Black woman; and Chila Kumari Singh Burman’s Splatter, created by pressing her painted body to the paper.
You leave the exhibition angry and sad, inspired and invigorated. How many battles have been fought, how much has been overcome - and how much there still is to go.
Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990 is at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, until June 1, 2025.
Latest arts news
🚔 National Television Award winner and former Coronation Street actor Peter Ash will be starring in the brand new stage version of Peter James’ Picture You Dead at Lowry, Salford, next month. DSI Grace investigates a cold case that leads him to the secretive world of fine art, but beneath the respectable veneer lurks a dark underworld of deception and murder.
🖼️ Wellington Yard in Wavertree, Liverpool, is hosting a weekend of art from Friday, March 21 to Sunday, March 23, featuring three exhibitions : The Joy of Painting, a group show curated by Gareth Kemp, celebrating the vibrancy and versatility of painting from artists across the UK; Socially Distanced, a showcase of contemporary sculptures from renowned artists nationwide, presented by 50 MV; and Sell Out, produced by Josie Jenkins, featuring more than 20 pieces by Liverpool-based artists at “irresistible prices”.
🤡 Slava’s SnowShow, a “visual and musical extravaganza offering a dream-like vision that overflows with theatrical magic and humorous antics”, is touring to Manchester Opera House from Wednesday, October 22 to Sunday, October 26.
🕯️Art After Dark, a new evening event celebrating Birkenhead’s thriving creative scene through exhibitions, open studios, and community-driven activities will take place on Friday, March 21 at venues in the town.
In case you missed it
Opening this week
Pictures by the new generation of Magnum photographers, Peter van Agtmael and Newsha Tavakolian, who share their perspectives on the wars they witnessed and experienced in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, feature in Open Eye Gallery’s new exhibition No Iconic Images. As the world burns and images circulate faster than ever, it examines recent wars and how they are portrayed and reflected upon through photography. Runs from Thursday, March 20 to Sunday, May 4.
Coming soon
Tambo & Bones, a darkly comic and provocative satire on capitalism and black performance by US spoken word poet and playwright Dave Harris, tours to the Liverpool Playhouse from Wednesday. March 26 to Saturday, March 29. Directed by Olivier Award-winner Matthew Xia, the story follows Tambo (Clifford Samuel) and Bones (Daniel Ward) as they journey from comedy double-act to hip-hop superstars, to activists in a future America, contending with the alarming repercussions of a nation torn apart by race.
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I’m off now to finish reading Roger Lewis’ deliciously vicious Erotic Vagrancy: Everything About Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. In the meantime, you can get hold of me on Instagram, on Bluesky, in the comments or by replying to this email.
Have a great week,
Laura
P.S. Introducing Martin the Mersey Mountain
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