ARTFUL Talk #4 – Feminist Art Making Histories Launch

Join us for a launch event of two outputs from Feminist Art Making Histories, a project exploring the encounter between art and feminism across Britain and Ireland from the 1970s-1990s.

This event marks the Leeds launch of two interlinked outputs from the Feminist Art Making Histories project: Feminist Art Lives – an eight-part podcast series on feminist art in Britain and Ireland; and the Feminist Art Making Histories Archive – a digital archive of oral history, long-form, interviews with artists, curators and writers.

Two members of the Feminist Art Making Histories team – Dr Elspeth Mitchell (University of Leeds) and Dr Martina Mullaney (IADT) – will reflect on their experiences of conducting interviews for the project. They will consider the methodological and ethical dimensions of oral history as feminist practice such as the negotiation of intimacy and critical distance and the responsibilities that accompany the stewardship of others’ lives and recollections.

By bringing Britain and Ireland into a shared frame, the project traces the exchanges and solidarities that have connected feminist art and activism across the two islands. At the same time, it takes seriously the colonial and political histories that bind and divide them, addressing which feminist histories and practices have been centred, and which overlooked.

Oral history occupies a distinctive place in feminist historiography. It has long offered a means of recovering experiences marginalised by institutional archives, yet it also raises questions of testimony, memory, authorship and care. What does it mean to constitute an archive from voices rather than objects? And how are interviewer and interviewee each implicated in the histories that result?

*About the series*

The aim of the ARTFUL lunchtime talks series is to bring together students, postgraduate researchers and staff to showcase our culture of vibrant research and creative practice across the school and beyond.

Taking place on Monday during term time, speakers will include researchers, artists and practitioners.

Whilst primarily aimed at our school community, anyone interested in the series is welcome to join us. There is no need to book – just turn up!