Women and Work: Celebrating the Purple Green and White
International Women’s Day – or at least earlier that same week – was the perfect time to visit Tate Britain’s ‘Women and Work’ display, looking at the industrial issues of the 1970s from an overtly feminist perspective, and combining this with an in depth look at Sylvia Pankhurst’s intimate paintings of women in the workplace and examples of artefacts and the early branding of the Suffragette movement on display in the adjacent gallery. Curator Emma Chambers provided us with masses of context and insight (thanks, Emma!)
Taking the use of lists in Women and Work as a way of organising some of the many themes that emerged from these displays, we looked at some examples of literary lists – James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love, by Sarah Butler, and The White Album, Joan Didion
PROMPTS:
Create your own list that celebrates, or remembers, or explores your response to ‘women, work, in/visibility, recognition, and commemoration….’
Considering the range of ways women are represented, recognised and celebrated in our culture – What women you would like to see celebrated – from your personal experience, and also from a larger context – historical and contemporary; famous and unsung?*
*these are themes that will be recurring over the next few months as part of Mary Ward’s ‘This Woman’s Work’ project. Watch this space…
Take a look at ‘Women and Work: Bermondsey Boxes and Suffragette Teapots’ page to see some of the FANTASTIC writing the day inspired.
