In the project Staying, the results of which will soon be available online, the women use vivid and dramatic stories and images that tell of the difficulties they faced coming to Britain. Along with the artist Oreet Ashery and several other leading figures from the lesbian art world — the poet Cherry Smyth, the performance artist Lois Weaver and the film-maker Campbell X — the women have written about the traumatising discrimination they have experienced because of their sexual orientation.

Staying is launched on 20 January 2010 at an invitation-only performance event celebrating the project. The event includes performed readings from Staying: Dream, Bin, Soft Stud and Other Stories, special catering inspired by the twelve alter ego characters by food artists Blanch and Shock, and a Q&A between the audience and a panel of lawyers and immigration experts on the current legal system for lesbian asylum seekers. Guests will receive a complimentary copy of Staying: Dream, Bin, Soft Stud and Other Stories, which is also being distributed to those who work with Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans (LGBT) asylum issues.

For further information, interviews or images please email Sarah Davies,
sarah@artangel.org.uk or Janette Scott, janette@artangel.org.uk, or call 020 7713 1400.

Image from the Artangel press pack

Images by Susan Anderson

Charlotte

Laura

The rosettes were a great opportunity to get down a few words which define your relationship with feminism, what it means to you and what not. There were a huge range of answers 30 minutes into a 2 hour affair so I can only imagine the scope of the project! There’s a lot of back and forth about what feminism is, who owns it, what’s “real” and what’s not allowed and on and on, and to a certain extent finding the words to describe it is important. However I’m intensely interested in what it is to people, how they define their needs and how that plays into feminism, this seems like a project that will start to pry into that (probably not as deeply as Catherine and Kristin though)

The full set will be available online some time, do look out for them on Davina and Nadine’s websites.

Charlotte

Is sewing art? Do you see the ‘best’ art in galleries? Whose interpretation is more valid: the artist or the critic? Is having an exhibition of all female artists exclusionary or important? What’s stopping you from being an artist?

This exhibition is the first collaborative curatorial venture of two young women, Rachel Kaye (Gallery II, University of Bradford) and Melanie Maddison (Colouring Outside The Lines zine), and seeks to open the discussion of who has access to art – in terms of both curators and artists.

Colouring Outside the Lines: The Exhibition will feature artwork and installations by Abigail Brown, Heidi Burton, Morwenna Catt, Naseem Darbey, Carolyn Mendelsohn and Helen Musselwhite.

Colouring Outside The Lines started life in 2003 as a self-produced zine. The publication interviewed female artists and included reproductions of their art giving the women featured a voice over their own productivity beyond traditional art criticism and the meta-narratives of the art world. The zine focused on artists working in less-conventional forms. Based on the philosophy of the Colouring Outside the Lines zine the curators worked together to select work which departed from the ‘traditional canvas’ and conventional mediums of creation and production – quite literally, work which coloured outside the lines. Visitors are invited to actively participate in contemporary debates on galleries and power, the differences between DIY and applied art, feminist art discourses and the possibilities of subverting institutional spaces.

Opening times.
Mon – Fri, 10am-5pm,
Thursdays ‘til 6pm.
Free entry

Special opening, Sat 4 July 11 – 4pm.
To coincide with the University of Bradford open day. At midday there will be a picnic and story-telling session with the opportunity to discuss the exhibition with the artists and curators
involved in the project in a relaxed setting. Meet up at 12 noon in the gallery.

Let us know if you make it along to the exhibition – we’d love to have your reviews in the comments.