Group Work: Art and Feminism

Groups are axiomatic for feminist practice. In many periods, women artists have come together in studios, collectives and through activism to share resources, offer mutual support and develop new ways of working. Group projects have taken many different forms, from artists working together on artworks, to collaborative publications, DIY galleries, scholarly programmes, and international networks. While there has been important scholarship on feminist art groups, the recent resurgence of interest in ‘woman artists’ has tended to obscure the complex contexts in which many artists worked and struggled for a career and an audience. In monographic accounts, these group contexts are often taken to be only a part of a career or diminished as a minor history. In this session, we are interested in what happens when the group is centred.

Focusing on the distinctive importance of groupwork for feminist practice, understood as intersectional, this session invites proposals which present new research on groups, from historical accounts to methodological and theoretical interventions. We are interested in the difficulties and rewards of studying groups. Papers may discuss how to approach dispersed archives, conflicting histories, bad feelings, too much information or too little; or reflect on the productive challenges to disciplinary conventions and divisions, national schools, or ideological affiliations. For periods in which primary sources are lost or limited, how might group contexts provide the impulse to hypothesise alternative historical narratives? And, how might histories of reactionary groups and formations shape what we take to be radical practices?