This symposium examined how feminist and queer art and visual culture challenged Northern Irish art and society since 1968. The period is one in which wider political developments relating to gender and sexuality evidence both the challenges that women and LGBTQ+ people have faced in gaining equality and the energy of groups that fought for it. Complicating much of the current discourse around Northern Irish art after 1968, which is often dominated by examinations of the impact of ‘the Troubles’, this symposium sought to nuance this discussion by highlighting the complex and various approaches to political art making that formed a significant part of Northern Irish practice. Northern Ireland’s Feminist and Queer Art Histories explored the ways in which attention to gender and sexuality can help us rethink the writing of Northern Irish art history.
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We are delighted to share the news that Array are one of five artist collectives that have been nominated for the Turner Prize which will be held in Coventry as part of the UK City of Culture 2021 celebrations. The shortlist also includes: Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S.), Cooking Sections, Gentle/Radical and Project Art Works.
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You mentioned activism, do you consider yourself an activist artist?
When I was living in London I had a very minor involvement with activist feminist groups but this contact was mainly academic. When I started this project I would not have said I was an activist artist, rather that I was politically engaged. However now I would definitely consider myself an activist. Because I became so involved with this project I equally became totally embedded in activist culture. I believe that if I want to approach this subject from an honest perspective I have to take an activist standpoint. However something I have learned through this process is that everyone has to approach activism in their own way. As an artist I want to open a more nuanced discussion, one which acknowledges the personal rather than the theoretical.
Fertile Ground: reframing the abortion experience in art and activism
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I've chosen photographers who seemed to engage a specific story, place or quality - whose vision mines that milieu for pictures that don't just attach themselves to a topic but properly render it either visually arresting or obscure, but also leave us with some imaginative or conceptual work to do ourselves. It's that that I want in a photograph or a body of work: a sense that however satisfying or startling or instructive the image, something more remains just out of reach.
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This acknowledgement of one’s pain is tightly connected to the acknowledgment of one’s right to be protected from that pain – whether you think such pain belongs to the unborn or the women. The fact is women’s pain is a tricky subject to visualize: how do you illustrate the mental distress a woman can feel when facing a pregnancy she cannot take upon herself? How do you show the shame, loneliness and anxiety brought by having to travel overseas to terminate it? How do you picture the inner, physical and mental pain you can go through when having an abortion, especially in secrecy, with post-care being complicated? The silence surrounding abortion in Ireland echoes the visual blackout of women’s pain.
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What do you call it when feminist podcasters have a conversation about female collaboration, draconian patriarchal laws and where we plan to stick them, and vulvas on churches (yes) with feminist abortion rights activists and artists, in front of a live audience that entirely consists of OTHER people devoted to fighting abortion stigma??
You call it pure bliss. No punchline here.
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