It’s been incredibly busy recently at work and Uni, and I felt I was falling behind on the ‘non obligatory’ research tasks, that I really enjoy, and do actually stretch my thought process. So in an effort to multi task, I found this podcast from Tate which I could download and listen on spotify on the go, being creative in the studio or just spinning the many plates I have on the go!!!

Whilst this research task is not really ‘pitching to an author’, it does demonstrate important political aspects of an era that were highlighted, and this is demonstrated when they talk about their work and the effect it had on their arts movement at the time.

In this episode, Curator Linsey Young discusses the start of the Women's Liberation Movement and hears from women who were making art work in the early 1970s. Being a child growing up in the 1970s and 80s, I was very aware of the movement in the news, but unaware of the feminist art that followed this movement from makers and activists, who came together to demand change and create new spaces to share their art.  From flour bombs to fly-posted propaganda, gallery installations to crocheted postal art, these women and their work forged a path for future generations.

In the first Episode, Linsey talks to Margaret Harrison who’s work is currently featured at Tate Modern about the history of feminist Art from the 1970s-80s which is broad, rich and nuanced and responds to when the womens Liberation was taking off in this era.

Margaret talks about life in the 1970s where women were realising they wanted to be independent and not rely on men. She talks about her first job in a school, where women weren’t welcome in their school department, and this made her found the womens Liberation Group in London, where they all met and discussed their isolation and experiences as a women.

She discusses the ‘Miss World’ competition at The Albert Hall, where women were paraded and their measurements were shouted out. It was this representation against women that inspired her to create a series of artworks based on the same way women were being treated.

One of her artworks were men were depicted the same way as the women were being depicted in that era. For instance she showed Captain America with breasts and heels and stockings with his genitals out. Bunny Penis - She showed a picture of Hugh Hefner with ears and a bunny penis, from a feminist perspective in a gallery.

But the gallery owner decided to take them down after threats from the police as they found this insulting to men. But not as a women, which was the point she was trying to get across. The Hugh Hefner picture was taken and never returned.

In the following year, Margaret got involved in the Women’s Workshop of the Artists Union where she met Mary Kelly and Kay Hunt. They created a piece Women and work about Women’s working conditions about the unfair treatment and working conditions between women and men in factory work. This piece exposed the owners of how unfair women were being treated and how they were avoiding giving them equal pay.

She also discovered and researched Homeworkers (see above piece) and how work was being outsourced and workers were being paid a pittance. They became the visual voices of the Women’s movement of the era.