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Women, like craft, are often portrayed as pleasant and placid. This exhibition celebrates protest and outrage, stitched into fabric and fired in the kiln. The suffragettes created a visual language of resistance through posters, pamphlets, banners, sashes, handkerchief-petitions and ceramic tableware. Many seemingly domestic objects became weapons of dissent and symbols for a societal revolution. On the 100-year anniversary of partial women’s suffrage in the UK, this exhibition of collaborative work draws upon the material histories of dis-obedient craft.
Alongside the aesthetics of protest the exhibition also responds to the history of anti-suffragette propaganda. In particular the use of animalistic imagery that has long been a method employed to oppress and degrade marginalised groups as lesser, other and sub- or non-human. Here the artists are reclaiming an old insult depicting women as cats; gathering together symbols of female power and resistance. Through craft techniques these works celebrate a radical past, acknowledge the continuing struggle for equal rights, and make a hopeful gesture toward a feminist future.
Juliet Fleming: Biography
Juliet Fleming was born in London in 1991 and lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. She received BA Hons Fine Art from Newcastle University in 2015 and a Post Graduate diploma from Northumbria University in 2018. Recent exhibitions include ‘hubbub’, GOLDTAPPED, Middlesbrough Art Weekender, Middlesbrough (2018), ‘Six of one, half a dozen of the other’, Exchange Residency at The Royal Standard, Liverpool, and The NewBridge Project, Newcastle upon Tyne, ‘Close to you’, TESTT Space, Durham (2018), ‘Aftertaste’, The Trophy Room, Liverpool, ‘is this it?: I miss you, Blockbuster...’, A217 Gallery, London (2017), and ‘Worried Mother’, M I L K x Workplace takeover, Workplace Gallery, Gateshead (2016). Fleming is the Director of GOLDTAPPED, an artist-led initiative providing space for experimentation, development and support emerging artist practices.
Sarah-Joy Ford: Biography
Sarah-Joy Ford was born in Cheshire in 1993 and lives in Manchester. She studied at The University of Leeds, The Hungarian University of Fine Art, Budapest, Hungary, and Manchester School of Art. Recent exhibitions include ‘Queen’, COLLAR Gallery, Manchester, ‘Processions’, Artichoke, London (2018), ‘Weaving Europe: The World as Mediation’, Shelley Residence, Paphos, Cyprus, ‘SuperYonic’, Copeland Gallery, London (2017), and ‘Wish You Were Here’, Stryx, Birmingham (2016). Curatorial projects include ‘Cut Cloth: Contemporary Textiles and Feminism’, The Portico Library, Manchester (2017) and ‘The Guild: Contemporary Textiles’, Temple Works, Leeds (2016). She is artist in residence for Strange Perfume, Chetham’s Library, Manchester (2018). Ford is the recipient of Doctoral Training Partnership Award for her PhD research examining quilting as a methodology for re-visioning British lesbian archives. She is co-director of SEIZE Projects, Leeds, and the Queer Research Network Manchester.
For further information or images please contact:
Christopher Yeats, Programme Manager
tel: 0191 261 8281, email: info@vane.org.uk
Vane is open Wednesday-Saturday, 12-5pm, admission free.T +44(0) 191 261 8281
www.vane.org.uk
First Floor, Commercial Union House, 39 Pilgrim Street, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 6QE.
