Our top talks with female artists, authors and curators for International Women's Day
To mark International Women's Day on 8th March, we've rounded up some of our favourite talks from our Wednesday evening series, featuring talented and inspiring female artists, art historians, curators and authors.
Revised Edition - Drawing Women Back into the History of Art: Coral Woodbury in Conversation with Claudia Tobin
Coral Woodbury and Claudia Tobin discuss Coral’s most recent project, Revised Edition, which rectifies the complete erasure of women artists from the first 29 printings of Janson‘s History of Art. First published in 1962, it became the defining art history text of the twentieth century, shaping the Western canon and understanding of art for generations. And yet the text did not mention a single female artist until 1986. With Revised Edition, Coral inks portraits of women artists on pages torn from the book, making visible those who have been obscured.
Watch Revised Edition: Drawing Women Back into the History of Art
Laura Knight - An Artist's Life on the Edge: Sacha Llewellyn and Linda Falcone in Conversation
War-effort women and ballerinas, circus performers, Gypsies and Nuremburg criminals: during her 70-year career, Laura Knight (1877–1970) captured the spirit of her times, as one of the most famous British painters of her day. The conversation begins with a question posed by Knight herself: 'Now that womenkind are no longer born to hold a needle in one hand and a scrubbing brush in the other, what great things may not happen?'
Watch An Artist's Life on the Edge
Mandy El-Sayegh and Carine Harmond in Conversation
This conversation explores the multi-faceted artistic practice of Mandy El-Sayegh. The speakers discuss the tension between abstraction and creating meaning in her work as it manifests in the entanglement of painting, drawing, and writing. They will also address El-Sayegh’s video and performative works and how they relate to subjects of violence, the physical body and processes of care.
Watch El-Sayegh and Harmond in Conversation
Botanical Minds: Gina Buenfeld-Murley and Gemma Anderson in Conversation with Claudia Tobin
Exploring the exhibition 'The Botanical Mind: Art, Mysticism and the Cosmic Tree' at Camden Art Centre, curator Gina Buenfeld and artist and researcher Gemma Anderson discuss the relationship between botanical life, visual art and the imagination. Drawing on indigenous traditions from the Amazon rainforest; alternative perspectives on Western scientific rationalism; and new thinking around plant intelligence, philosophy and cultural theory, the exhibition and its online counterpart investigates the significance of the plant kingdom to human life, consciousness and spirituality across cultures and through time.
Somaya Critchlow and Isabel Seligman in Conversation
Artist alumna Somaya Critchlow and Isabel Seligman, Curator in the Prints and Drawings Department of the British Museum, discuss their understanding of the conversation between the art of the past and the present. They examine ideas about representation, the body and the nude, and the role of drawing.
Watch Critchlow and Seligman in Conversation
Griselda Pollock on Charlotte Salomon's Question Artwork: Life? or Theatre?
Renowned art historian Griselda Pollock takes us through the powerful and moving work of German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943), who died in Auschwitz in 1943, a year after she had created one of the most complex, fascinating and challenging artworks of the modern era.
Listen to the Pollock and Salomon lecture
Between Painting and Drawing: Eileen Cooper RA and Rachel Jones
Eileen Cooper RA and Rachel Jones, artists at different stages of their careers, take us through a day in the studio, discussing the realities of balancing studio time and earning a living. They share personal views on the changing experience of women in art school and the art world, and touch on the topics of activism, personal and identity politics.
Watch Between Painting and Drawing
An Introduction to the New Hall Art Collection with Harriet Loffler
Curator Harriet Loffler discusses the past, present and future plans for the New Hall Art Collection, a collection of modern and contemporary art by women at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge. It includes over five hundred works by international artists - including Judy Chicago, Maggi Hambling, Lubaina Himid, Dame Paula Rego and Cornelia Parker - and is considered one of the largest and most significant collections of contemporary art by women in the world.
Listen to the New Hall Art Collection lecture
A Studio of My Own: Bobby Baker and Sarah Lightman
Artist and activist Bobby Baker in conversation with artist and writer Dr Sarah Lightman about a life of drawing. They talk about how they have claimed time and space to make work, as women and mothers.
Letizia Treves and Catherine Goodman on Artemisia
Letizia Treves curated The National Gallery’s Artemisia exhibition, which included some of the artist’s best-known paintings as well as recently discovered works, such as the Gallery’s acquisition of Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria. Letizia discusses Artemisia's life and work with artist Catherine Goodman, exploring what it means to be a woman artist from the seventeenth century to the present.
