Art / feminisim
Preview: Care and Control, The Galleries
Occupying a space on the first floor of The Galleries shopping centre during June 2019, Care and Control offers a historical perspective on sisterhood and non-violent direct action.
In 1982, 30,000 women from across the country gathered at the American airbase at Greenham Common, just outside Newbury, Berkshire. Together they held hands around the eight-mile perimeter fence to ‘embrace the base’.
It was a peaceful act of non-violence, as a way of showing a deep concern for life on earth, for future generations, loved ones, and the planet. Today, this once closely guarded land, holding American nucleur missiles, is a popular spot for dog walkers and families: thanks to the Greenham women, it has been restored once again to common land.
is needed now More than ever
Taking inspiration from the peace camps of Greenham and from the Women’s Liberation Movement in Bristol, Care and Control reflects on the details that made feminism such a profoundly successful movement.
Displaying newsletters, badges and original wire from the fence at Greenham Common, the message here is not only that sisterhood is powerful but that non-violent direct action is influential.
As an ode to the Greenham fence and the women who cut through it, the exhibition itself will be entered via a chain-link fence.
Co-creator Alice Tatton Brown explains: “We want the exhibition to feel like one big experiment in collective care, for people to climb through this fence into a world where sisterhood is powerful and where direct action is changing the world.
“All of us feel enclosed by something: debt, climate change, border control, tiredness, mental ill health, institutions. This is a space to look at how the women who have gone before us dealt with their social concerns, how they cared collectively for one another and created social change to benefit us all.”
Alice has also collaborated with University of Bristol academics Maud Perrier and Junko Yamashita to create a new exhibit. Collective Survival Kit is a collection of objects loaned by women, all responding to the question: how do you endure?
“WLM activists, feminist activists and their peers have contributed both practical and symbolic objects, ranging from those that soothe weariness to others which inspire disobedience,” Alice explains. “These objects draw attention to our own collective struggles and acts of care and resistance.”
Care and Control is open on June 7 & 8 and 14m & 15 at The Galleries shopping centre, BS1 3XA (first floor, opposite the food court), 12-5pm. Window exhibit on display from June 17 to July 1. All welcome: free, wheelchair accessible. For more information, search #CareandControl on social media.
Read more: Preview: Fire: Flashes to Ashes in British Art, RWA
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