Being, Making, Becoming: Women’s Art Library
Thursday 3 November 2022, 6.30-8pm
Online and In Person at Flat Time House (doors open at 6pm)
Panel discussion with Dr. Althea Greenan, Curator of the Women’s Art Library (Goldsmiths), Chloe Turner and Lauren Craig, reflecting on their experience of engaging with the WAL and the screening of a newly commissioned film by Holly Antrum on the WAL.
The spirit of the Women's Art Library, as a space of Being, Making and Becoming, manifests in the traces left behind by the people who have passed through the space since its formation. It is a place that connects people and ideas across generations, movements and geographies. It began as the Women Artists Slide Library, an artists' initiative that developed into an arts organization publishing catalogues and books as well as a magazine from early 1983 to 2002. WAL actively collects slides, ephemera and documentation of women’s art practice, and functions as a creative space for artists, curators and researchers to convene, explore and make new work. The event will celebrate the work of Dr. Althea Greenan, Curator of the Women’s Art Library, and will highlight how the archive has been used and experienced, its value as an intergenerational resource for political and artistic activism, and the possibilities and tensions of the WAL as a sanctuary and explorative space within a larger institution.
The event also coincides with the release of a film commissioned by Art360 by Holly Antrum on location at the Women’s Art Library with contributions from some of the many artists, curators and researchers who have engaged with and made new work at the WAL.
Event is free to attend online and with very limited capacity in-person. Click here to book a place.
Organised by Art360 Foundation
Art360 Foundation are working with Greenan and Artist and researcher, Holly Antrum to produce a short film documenting the Women's Art Library and its immersive spirit, to be released before the live event. The film will feature conversations about WAL’s unique legacy, framed by Althea’s voice as its guardian since the 1980s, and will address the decolonization of the space and its collections (ongoing since Rita Keegan began work on the Black Women Artists’ Index in the 1990s) and the political necessity of the WAL as a cultural intervention in the late 1970s to present.
This panel discussion is the second of a series organised through the Expanded Archives Network (EAN) which is run collaboratively between Art360 and Hauser & Wirth Institute.
You can sign up to become an EAN member at art360foundation.org.uk
Art360 Foundation are an independent charity providing artists and estates with consultation and practical support towards archiving and legacy planning.
Their work empowers artists and their representatives to preserve a life’s work through archival and legacy support. They aim to preserve and make visible previously unseen aspects of the UK’s cultural heritage for present and future generations through our bursary programme, public events and learning opportunities. The Art360 Programme promotes the diverse contributions of visual artists to society and the expertise of freelancers who are critical in supporting the preservation of artists’ archives.