Being Making Becoming: Women’s Art Archives as Sites of Activation
3 November 2022, Flat Time House
Event documentation by Scott Mains, and stills from 'Yes to the Work! The Women's Art Library', a film by Holly Antrum
As part of the Expanded Archives Network’s fall panel conversation with Hauser & Wirth Institute, we celebrated two long-running feminist artist communities and archives projects: The Women's Art Library – now housed at Goldsmiths, University of London – and The Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York. In both cases the place of the archive is critical, which is why the panels were broadcast live.
Read more about the Women’s Studio Workshop event here.
Both events incorporated films created for the occasion with live conversations to give context to the wider communities, art practices and relationships that are activated in the creation of and response to the archives, focusing on themes of intergenerational dialogue, collectivity, sanctuary and the unique position of these radical spaces that exist within or outside of “institutions.”
In conjunction with this event we released the film ‘Yes to the Work! The Women’s Art Library’ by Artist and Researcher, Holly Antrum. The film is framed by the voice and presence of Dr Althea Greenan, Curator of the Women's Art Library, who has been the guardian of the WAL since the 1980s, and some of the many women who have engaged with the WAL across generations including: Felicity Allen, Sarah Carne, Claire Collison, Lauren Craig, Galit Criden, Clare Gasson, Catherine Grant, Rita Keegan, Gina Nembhard, Symrath Patti, Nirmal Puwar, Gaytri Roopnarine and Chloe Turner.
On 3 November 2022 we held an in-conversation at Flat Time House, London, the former home of John Latham, with film participants, Chloe Turner and Lauren Craig, who discussed their experience of engaging with the Women’s Art Library with Archive Curator, Dr Althea Greenan.