REVIEW Apr 2025 ‘Women in Revolt!’ at The Whitworth
Kirsty Jukes
Della Grace/Del LaGrace Volcano Sonya & Linda, Kensal Rise, London 1983 © Della Grace/Del LaGrace Volcano
Art historian and writer Kirsty Jukes reviews ‘Women in Revolt!’ at Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. On its third and final stop, this touring retrospective of women’s art and activism between 1970 and 1990 is free to attend for the first time. Researched and curated by Linsey Young and organised by Tate Britain, attendees can see work by over 90 women artists and collectives whose ideas helped fuel the women’s liberation movement during a period of significant social, economic and political change. Don’t miss this timely and moving presentation of radical art which is on view until Sunday 1 June 2025.
At the time of writing this review of ‘Women in Revolt!’ at Whitworth Art Gallery, I am filled with a visceral rage, teeth clenched, fingers stiff as I type loudly. Feelings move faster than I can write them down, a swirling vortex of unspoken injustices. A woman’s work, it seems, is never done. This comprehensive exhibition demands numerous repeat visits, so perfectly and directly does it reflect my own reality and that of many people around me. I am floored by being seen so clearly in a large arts institution, and incredulous as to why this is the first time I can remember feeling this way in a space like this. It is an emotional experience and one I will not forget in a long time.
Curated and organised by Linsey Young, ‘Women in Revolt!’ is the result of five years’ researching and interviewing. Young has represented careful and considered co-working between many groups of women, including the labour of those who found a way to show their work at a time when there was much less opportunity in traditional gallery spaces to do so. A variety of lived experiences, of media and of subject matter have been considered here in an approach rarely seen before. After all, there is no one way to be a woman.
Memorialisation and mobilisation are given equal space throughout the gallery allowing the viewer time to reflect and prepare to act. Dedicated to Young’s mum Gael Elizabeth Stuart (1955-2020) a Socialist single parent, unpaid carer and full-time nurse who lived with a chronic health condition, it stands as a fitting tribute to all of those pressed under the boot of a patriarchal system. As a WASPI woman who lost her life after a late cancer diagnosis from a male doctor, a story all too familiar to those of us forced to plead their case in advocating for their own bodies, she never lived to receive her pension or admire the fruition of her daughter’s work. We lose too many women to the multiple injustices that infiltrate many areas of our lives. Young has taken the compassion and stoicism of her mum’s life lessons and the pain of her grief and turned it into a gift for us all. It is certain that she would have been immensely proud of what has been achieved here.
As a group, women are still navigating our way through fragile living situations exacerbated by rights being curbed on all sides. A slow wade through the stinking bog of patriarchy we are all mired in left, right and centre. Work, home, healthcare, social structures and accompanying legislation continue to be repealed and contested, our lives constantly at risk of ending (or being ended) prematurely due to violences enacted on our bodies either through negligence or hatred and without our consent.
Gina Birch 3 Minute Scream (1977) © Gina Birch
The oppression of women and the shackles of second-class citizenship are intersectional issues that we must unite to counteract. No matter our personal differences, we are closely connected in our struggle for equality. This exhibition lays out the framework for how we can do this by learning from the lessons of the past and applying them to our very real present. Carefully, and at times under difficult circumstances, the network of sisters whose work is on display in this exhibition used grassroots means to achieve their goals and make their lives and those of the women around them more liveable. No action is too small, and this thoughtfully curated collection, created with the love and labour of myriad artists, advisors and activists, is testament to this.
Thinking about women struggling with power structures now in much the same way as they did during the 1970 to 1990 timeline of ‘Women in Revolt!’ evokes a particular form of anger in me. One that is tinged with sadness, longing, mourning for what could have been and what should be. With many of the world’s institutions in the death throes of capitalism and Western powers very quickly falling down the dark hole of fascism as I write and seemingly bent on pulling all of us with them, we are in dangerous times. Even though this exhibition charts the trials and tribulations of women at least 35 years ago, much of it still rings true.
According to UN Women, globally, 85,000 women and girls were killed intentionally in 2023 with 140 women and girls dying every day at the hands of their partner or a close relative, which means one woman or girl is killed every 10 minutes. (1) This staggering reality sits alongside our fights for reproductive rights, to make choices for and about our own bodies. It is part of the non-cisgender community's struggle to live freely without conforming to narrow visions of womanhood. It can be seen in expectations for women to do much of the unpaid labour in the home upheld by pay and housing unfit for independent living. Race is still a huge factor in the type of healthcare women receive, how much they are paid for their labour in comparison to white women and how they are treated generally by all walks of society. These are just a few of the many macro and microaggressions we feel every day as women. How far it may seem to those on the outside of these lived experiences that the world has moved on from the period covered in this exhibition, be that technologically, financially and socially, yet, when it comes to women’s rights, a lot has stayed the same. This is why viewing ‘Women in Revolt!’ should be an essential part of your next two months. A free look into twenty years of women and female-identifying people’s activism so that we may learn lessons about our present and stand empowered on their foundations.
Alongside the main exhibition is a reiteration of Bobby Baker’s ‘An Edible Family in a Mobile Home’ installation, outside and in front of the gallery. Originally made in 1976 in her Acme prefab house, this unassuming unit reminds me very much of Kurt Schwitters’ lost ‘Merzbau’. In both artworks, the artists have built on top of fragile domestic structures with throwaway materials to create something fantastical from the banal. Grottos and wonderlands in suburbia. Spray painted across the modular building are the words ‘mother’, ‘father’, ‘son’, ‘daughter’, rendered in much the same way as verbal insults are squirted from tin cans onto urban structures. These words conjure up a metaphorical accusatory finger in my mind at individuals in those roles, questioning both the meaning and viability of the nuclear family unit. This feeling permeates the entire space inside with headlines from old newspaper and magazine cuttings blaring outdated ideas right into my eyeline and, as a direct result, propelling me back in time to when racist, sexist and homophobic ideas were given carte blanche in much of the UK press.
Traditionally, the home has been the space in which feminine experience is supposed to live. A container with four sides and a lid that women either thrive in building their own utopias inside or else dash their bodies against the walls in frustration like an animal caged. Domesticity is celebrated and challenged in numerous ways throughout the exhibition, ‘An Edible Family in a Mobile Home’ literally equates consumerism with contemporary family life via the silent redundancy of a saccharin family slumped or recumbent in deafening stillness. Viewers can consume the family unit in the form of cakes and biscuits made by local female run bakery Long Boi’s. As I eat pieces of the Baby and Father I feel like a contemporary Lamia, a scorned and flawed woman turned monster of Greek mythology who devoured any child that she could find since she had lost hers. (2) Pregnancy, resulting in both birth and loss, is another theme of ‘Women in Revolt!’, one that is personal to me as I remember my own struggle for motherhood ending in multiple miscarriages.
The Whitworth’s proximity to Old Saint Mary’s over the road which houses the Department of Reproductive Medicine is also not far from my mind. I wonder how many women are in there now facing their own battles with a system ill-fitting for their bodies and how much knowing other women have been through the same might comfort them during that time. In fact, this whole installation is sweet with the smell of decaying dreams and as quickly as I take in each nightmarish domestic setup, I need to leave for air. It is an experience that requires attendance in person to be fully appreciated. This Manchester presentation has successfully crowdfunded to produce a new editioned artist film by Bobby Baker and Hugo Glendinning that ensures a legacy for the work beyond 2025.
Bobby Baker An Edible Family in a Mobile Home Tate 2023. Documented by Hugo Glendinning © Bobby Baker
‘Women in Revolt!’ as a title immediately brought to mind two things for me - Eve Figes’ 1970 polemic ‘Women in Revolt’ (3) and the Paul Morrissey directed, Andy Warhol produced film of the same title from the following year. The former is an influential text that uses a historic lens to examine patriarchal attitudes and women’s place in modern society. Figes deftly describes man’s “capacity for putting women on a pedestal and at the same time trampling her underfoot”. (4) Its influence can be felt throughout all six of the themed areas in the exhibition from domesticity in both ‘The Marxist wife still does the housework’ and Chapter II ‘A Man’s God’ to women’s experiences with healthcare in both ‘There’s no such thing as a society’ and Chapter III ‘Mammon’. Although the text focuses mainly on cis able-bodied white women’s experiences (there is not a single mention of lesbian, trans or queer people, let alone women of colour or differently abled women, aside from a few clumsy references), it acts as context to consider the exhibition timeline and a marker for what has changed, particularly in feminist discourse, since then.
The latter, Morrissey’s film ‘Women in Revolt’, is a satirical and sometimes problematic look at radical feminism. Seen through the eyes of trans superstars Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis, Morrissey rejects his right-wing, Catholic tendencies to draw pathos from his heroine’s inability to reconcile the movement’s intellectual objectives with their physical needs. (5) Although ham-fisted at times, overall, he respects the women in his film and sympathises with their perception of systemic injustice through their different viewpoints. What may have been seen then as a sideways look at radical feminism, can be read with the distance of time as an attempt at pushing the boundaries of womanhood further and more inclusively to include queer narratives, sex workers and alternative ways of living with men. Although only Figes is cited as a key text for this exhibition, I think that looking at both together really sets the stage for feelings of that time inside, outside and on the peripheries of the global women’s liberation movement.
1970 was, after all, a critical year for women’s rights. It was the origin point in Britain when movements and group actions began to take form, the beginning of a clearly defined Black women's liberation movement and a year in which Figes’ fellow writers released texts to inspire and accompany this uprising. These include Kate Millett's exposé on patriarchal structures ‘Sexual Politics: A Surprising Examination of Society's Most Arbitrary Folly’ (6), Robin Morgan’s consciousness-raising anthology of second wave feminist writings ‘Sisterhood is Powerful: Writings from Women's Liberation’ (7), Shulamith Firestone’s argument against an oppressive sexual class system ‘The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution’ (8), Toni Cade Bambara’s collection of early works from some of the most celebrated African American female writers on racism and gender discrimination ‘The Black Woman: An Anthology’ (9) and Joanna Russ’ feminist science-fiction novel ‘The Female Man’ (10) amongst many others. These starting points can be felt throughout Young’s chosen themes which can be viewed in any order. They are -
● Rising with fury - a look at the circumstances under which the first national women’s liberation conferences were arranged in the UK and the advent of second wave feminism.
● The Marxist wife still does the housework - consciousness raising by women who were navigating Margaret Thatcher’s election alongside equal pay rights at work, recognition of free labour in the home, reproductive rights and female bodies as a site of both oppression and emancipation.
● Oh Bondage! Up Yours! - an examination of subcultures and new models of womanhood facilitated by DIY culture and the subversion of gender norms.
● Greenham women are everywhere - focusing on forms of protest, particularly the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp which was created in 1981 to challenge the housing of nuclear missiles and, more broadly, the military industrial complex.
● Black woman time now - two rooms highlighting the importance of Black feminist arts practice in the UK, including collectives formed to raise visibility of issues felt by women of colour and their communities in addition to creating a space for their work which at the time (and still to this day) is largely ignored by institutions.
● There’s no such thing as a society - a focus on cuts to state sponsored art spaces and the rise of the commercialisation of art which coincided with the oppression of this country's most vulnerable communities during the AIDs crisis.
To pull out individual works from ‘Women in Revolt!’ in this review for analysis, something I would usually do with those that resonate most with me, would mean leaving out the vital work of so many others. I saw the exhibition and the work of those in it as a collective response to intersectional injustices and I feel that this is where its power lies. As a result, I have decided not to highlight individual artists or works here. What has been chosen is as exciting, wide-ranging and eclectic as the experiences of their creators. There are voices missing, people were difficult to trace due to the unfortunate reality of women artists' work not being collected or studied by institutions leaving little to no paper trail besides word of mouth. This exhibition goes a long way, longer than many seen before in British institutions, to broaden the scope and challenge these collecting practices. Young herself described the fact that out of the seven hundred objects included in the original iteration at Tate Britain (there are fewer here due to space limitations at the Whitworth) only eleven were from their collection. This did not surprise me as it is a story echoed across many galleries across the country. They have acquired more off the back of ‘Women in Revolt!’ and the hard work of everyone involved, but much still needs to be done to address this. Viewing the rest of the pieces on show has been made possible by lending from other institutions, living artists or their families, another example of the community spirit in which this exhibition was conceived. By placing many unheard or lesser-known voices next to recognisable names, a natural network, some with oppositional opinions is created, telling our story through diverse and challenging perspectives.
Rita Keegan Red Me © Rita Keegan (1986). Image: UK Government Art Collection
Comprehensively covering various media from film to textiles, photography to sculpture, installation to ready-made, the sheer number of works is impressive, so instead I hope I have set the context for your own visit so that you can view each work from a personal perspective. Curation of the space makes it easy to make your own choices as you move around. One moment I found myself listening to Ludus and looking at fanzines, punk records and artworks about the body, the next I was learning about organising and affirmative action created by women of colour, at another point I was seething at medical and employment injustices and then I was thinking about representation in media and advertising. The list goes on.
I think any woman walking around each of the rooms would be hard pressed not to relate to at least one of the themes on display, to have struggled through red tape, narrow societal expectations or patriarchal pressures. The six key themes covered here do the heavy lifting required to open areas of further research and investigation for anybody attending. I felt immediately compelled to do this as soon as I left and have since enjoyed reading about the work of women I had never come across before. The true beauty of exhibitions like this one is the way in which it can connect women separated by distance, time, class or social constructs. My brain is fizzing with ideas, overflowing with hope and rage, ready to make real my very own contribution to the radical artistic landscape of these trying times. Perhaps in years to come we can meet back here, reflect and build our strength again. I hope others who attend are empowered enough to feel the same. We can’t give up now, we have to resist, we must.
Thank you to all the activists and artists for their strength and vulnerability in creating work for us, Linsey Young and her team for time and dedication in realising this exhibition in the way they have and to the Whitworth for their assistance and hospitality.
‘Women in Revolt!’ runs until Sunday 1 June 2025 at Whitworth Art Gallery and is free to attend.
Bobby Baker’s ‘An Edible Family In A Mobile Home’ installation is situated on the Whitworth's Sculpture Terrace outside the gallery entrance. It is open until Sunday 20 April 2025. Please see here for specific opening times as they differ from those of the main gallery.
To view the upcoming Women in Revolt! events programme, please click here.
To download the Women in Revolt! reading list, please click here.
*In the interests of sharing knowledge and anti-gatekeeping, I have included open access links to all footnotes references in this review below.
Footnotes
(2) Diodorus Siculus, Library of History (Loeb Classical Library LCL in 10 volumes), with Greek and English translation by C.H. Oldfather, Book XX. 41. 2-6, p.253 - https://archive.org/details/DiodorosOfSicily034.598/Diodoros%20of%20Sicily%2010%20%2819.66-20%29/page/252
(3) https://archive.org/details/patriarchalattit0000evaf
(4) Eve Figes, ‘Patriarchal Attitudes: The Case for Women in Revolt’, Fawcett (1970) p.15
(5) Maurice Yacowar, The films of Paul Morrissey, p.56 - https://archive.org/details/filmsofpaulmorri00yaco/page/n9/mode/1up?q=Women+in+revolt
(6) https://monoskop.org/images/c/c2/Millett_Kate_Sexual_Politics_1970.pdf
(7) https://archive.org/details/sisterhoodispowe00vint