A Day in London: WOMEN IN REVOLT!
An exhibition that acknowledges the achievements of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Britain
Image copyright Tate Britain
Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990 has just opened at Tate Britain, London (until 7 April, 2024) It’s a retrospective exhibition of British feminist art, dating from the 1970s – 1990s and an historical overview using film, photography, texts, books, sculpture, drawings, paintings and decorative art created by over 100 artists. The show explores the early days of the Women’s Liberation Movement, their meetings, recordings, and art bringing women together, to air views on the secondary role women were expected to take in society, compared to men.
It begins chronologically with photographs and film of the very first women’s liberation conference in the UK. It continues with the Miss World competition protests, and the inauguration of the Brixton Black Women’s Group. These early years concentrate on the expected role of women at work and in the domestic environment ,women trying to hold down a job and look after their children.
The sexist advertising campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s are really remarkable to view. It is surprising now that commercial companies like Fiat and Volvo were allowed to create advertising campaigns that openly denigrated women as sex objects.
The exhibition is full of diverse materials and there is so much to see and to comprehend. The source materials are phenomenal. It concludes with women’s response to Section 28, the gradual visibility and recognition of lesbian communities, and reaction to the AIDS epidemic. This may seem intense, the subject is but the curation of the show draws out the sincere intentions of the inaugurators of women’s movements. In turn, willingly endorsed by wide age-groups, from youths to grannies, especially those that set up the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, from September 1981, to protest against nuclear bombs, the cruise missiles being stored at RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire. (see photograph)
There is a lot to see and understand in this survey of such a revolutionary period in British history, activated by women seeking equality and respect. This is an historical recapture of how and why the revolution happened.
Worth seeing.
Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990
Tate Britain, Millbank, London, SW1P 4RG - until 7 April 2024