PANKHURST IN THE PARK CENTENaRY EDITION ART511 | 1 contents art511 magazine foreword 4-5 Ekua Bayunu 42-47 Lotte and Amy Women hold up half the sky, by Katie Cercone Marilyn Minter 6-9 Elisa Garcia de la Huerta 48-51 Selected bush paintings “Refuge” series Anna FC Smith 10-13 Lauren Velvick 52-56 The ritualistic heritage of the suffragettes Turning around and back again Melanie Bonajo 14-23 Helen Wewoira 56-59 Alien armageddon, empathy & the In conversation with Amy Clancy vine of the soul, by Katie Cercone ULTRACULTURAL OTHERS 60-63 go! push pops 24-25 SHIVA’S LINGA performative rap & notes Earthing Instructions & Mud joy with Grandmother willow, photos by Laura Weyl Naomi Kashiwagi 64-55 On her involvement with Pankhurst in the Park Bunny Collective 26-31 The sick role, by Samantha Conlon NARCISSISTER 66-71 Organ Player, selected stills High Prieztezz Or Nah 32-37 Genealogy of the kawaii twerk rave Tasha Whittle 72-75 Artist Profile Sol Kjøk 38-41 Spiralling smoke by Claire Zakiewicz 2 | ART511 ART511 | 3 foreword In 1918, after a hard fought battle, It’s not enough to be good at their some women in the UK were given the right game or even the best; it’s rigged. So, it’s to vote. It wasn’t a perfect result but it was time to devise our own, not just for and by a start; and it sparked significant change in women, but in collaboration with all those the 100 years that have followed. whose voices, opportunities and rights Women have played men at their are stifled. own game. They’ve climbed Everest, As one small step, this centenary explored space, pioneered scientific year, we want to provide a platform for breakthroughs, assumed positions of female artists, to redress the balance, to power, and many have become the best in challenge the inherited discriminatory their field. model of what constitutes success and find Other breakthroughs have facilitated another way of doing. these achievements, from the contraceptive That is the aim of this special edition. pill being made available and birth control It has been co-curated by Alexandra Arts clinics being opened, to the introduction of and Art 511 Mag. It is part of the third maternity pay, for some in the U.K, among and final instalment of Alexandra Arts’ many other things. Pankhurst in the Park 2018 programme. In the arts, there has been cause for A programme inspired by the actions of celebration. The best selling novelist of all women 100 years ago; and which aims OTHERS, Samantha Conlon/ Bunny Thanks also to you, for picking it up. time is a woman, Agatha Christie; Maria to empower its community (birthplace to Collective, High Prieztezz Or Nah, Sol We hope it engages, enrages and inspires Balshaw has become the first director of the Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the Suffrage Kjøk, Claire Zakiewicz, Ekua Bayunu, Elisa you, so that in 100 years’ time, we’re telling Tate; and, Carol Ann Duffy became the first movement) through engagement with Garcia de la Huerta, Lauren Velvick, Hannah a different herstory. women and openly bisexual poet laureate. their local environment and social history, Leighton Boyce, Ruth Barker, Castlefield And yet, inequality, and abuse, and to promote and provide a platform Gallery, Helen Wewoira, Naomi Kashiwagi, -Lotte Karlsen & Amy Clancy persist. The art world still bows to a model for the wealth of talented female artists in NARCISSISTER and Tasha Whittle. created by white European men. The top Manchester, the UK and beyond. Once again, we are grateful to Arts three museums in the world, the British This special print edition features a Council England for funding our 2018 Museum, the Louvre, and The Metropolitan host of inspirational contributors to whom programme, to Manchester City Council Museum of Art have never had female we owe huge debt of thanks – Scotto Department of Culture, St Mary’s Primary directors. Female artists earn less on average Mycklebust, Katie Cerone, Gia Portfolio, School, Friends of Alexandra Park and the than their male couterparts and make Christopher Booth, Pablo Melchor, Marilyn Neighbourhood Investment Fund from the up a fraction of the work in permanent Minter, Anna FC Smith, Melanie Bonajo, Go Whalley Range ward who have provided exhibitions and auction market. Push Pops, Laura Weyl , ULTRACULTURAL additional funding. 4 | ART511 ART511 | 5 Marilyn Minter (b. 1948, USA) lives and works in New York. She has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005, the Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, OH in 2009, La Conservera, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Ceutí/ Murcia, Spain in 2009, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH in 2010, and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany in 2011. Her video “Green Pink Caviar” was exhibited in the lobby of the MoMA in 2010 for over a year, and was also shown on digital billboards on Sunset Boulevard in L.A. and the Creative Time MTV billboard in Times Square, New York. Minter’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions in museums all over the world. In MARILYN 2006, Marilyn Minter was included in the Whitney Biennial, and in collaboration with Creative Time she installed billboards all over Chelsea in New York City. In 2013, Minter was featured in “Riotous Baroque,” an exhibition that originated at the Kunsthaus Zürich minter and traveled to the Guggenheim Bilbao. In 2015, Minter’s retrospective Pretty/Dirty opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX. Pretty/ Dirty then traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, and on to the Orange Country Museum of Art. Pretty/Dirty opened at the Brooklyn Museum in November, 2016. Minter is represented by Salon 94, New York and Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Cornucopia-1 Ginger 6 | ART511 ART511 | 7 Two Green Lights Tender 8 | ART511 ART511 | 9 the ritualistic heritage of the suffragettes anna fc smith The suffragettes’ militant activities were in the early modern period, women were frequently shocking for their time. June Purvis describes the leaders of riots. Ruff states ‘One historian has them as ‘transgressing the gender expectations of estimated [women] at a third of the participants of Edwardian society’; they unconsciously drew on a late eighteenth-century English riots’. Men would history of riotous actions and ritual behaviour that themselves take the guise of women to protest; in Julius R. Ruff portrays as ‘almost instinctual conduct’. 1736, the Edinburgh Proteus Riots consisted of men Their rebellious behaviour can be read in the context dressed as women led by ‘Madge Wildfire’. of both early modern riot and festive inversion. Early modern rioters drew on familiar festive The historical popular protest drew on the rituals, and these actions were directly repeated symbolism of ‘the world turned upside down’ by the suffragettes. Protestors would sing while – a phrase used by the early American women marching, accompanied by drums and other suffragists and anti-slave campaigners, Sojourner instruments, as Ruff says ‘in imitation of their Truth and Angelina Grimke, in the mid 1800s. activities during popular festivals’. Andrew Rosen This carnivalesque concept would flow in both repeatedly describes the suffragettes doing this. In directions. As Ruff says, ‘festival mocking satire and February 1907, Mrs Despard led marchers singing to ritual violence’ could quickly turn to ‘direct hostility, the tune of `John Brown’: ‘Rise up, women!’. mass violence, riot and rebellion’, and riots employed Ruff explains that the early modern protestor rituals to reorder society. also ‘frequently bore symbols of their unrest’ in the June Purvis quotes the Observer newspaper form of sprigs like ‘May revellers [or] bits of coloured in 1908 describing suffragettes as turning a ribbon affixed to their clothing’. In 1908, Mrs Pethick meeting in the Albert Hall into ‘a Bedlam ... all ¬Lawrence invented WSPU colours: purple, white, sense of decency lost ... it was a melancholy and and green, which would be worn by marchers and disheartening spectacle’. This social fear of disorder decorate their processional banners. Mrs Pethick mirrors commentary on festive riot by early modern ¬Lawrence said each colour had symbolic meaning: religious leaders, who thought that it stood against white for purity, purple for dignity and, like May morality, decency and self-control. Day, the green represented the ‘green fire of a new Turn-of-the-century anti-suffrage posters spring tide. AnnaFCSmith Egg 3 continually imagined the politicised woman as the cause of societal breakdown by destroying gender roles, but the female protestor had a long history – as 10 | ART511 ART511 | 11 The Bacchae And In Their Companies Deep Wine-jars Stand Forever and Anon2 The suffragettes often targeted that their meeting in the Caxton Hall, June politicians and members of the establishment 1909, began with ‘martial music played by and they would do this in manners similar a fife and drum band; the musicians wore to those used by their historical forbears. purple uniforms, adorned by green sashes and Retribution inflicted on individuals in white braids [then] a group of thirteen women, positions of power and authority ‘represented using small stones wrapped in brown paper, a violent inversion of the social hierarchy akin began to break windows at the Privy Council, to that we found common in early modern Treasury and Home Offices.’ festive life’ (Ruff). Ethel Moorhead was jailed The suffragette’s actions appeared to after throwing an egg at Winston Churchill, break new ground in their period, but they a belittling act of ancient origin which Chitra were rooted in the innate history of rebellion. Ramaswamy claims ‘strips a politician of his We seem bound to repeat these ritualistic gravitas’. In November 1909, Theresa Garnett traditions of transgression when attempting to attacked Winston Churchill whilst wielding a drastically reorder society and turn the world riding-switch, an act reminiscent of festive upside down.