Elizabeth Friedlander exhibition

Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft presents the story of outstanding artist, designer and typographer Elizabeth Friedlander. The work of Friedlander (1903-1984) is instantly recognisable as mid-20th century design at its best, but few will know the name behind the art. Best known for her Penguin book covers and Bauer Type Foundry typeface ‘Elizabeth’, the exhibition touches on her escape to London from 1930s Nazi Germany, friendship with her sponsor – poet and printer Francis Meynell – and her work with a wartime British black propaganda unit. The show includes rarely-seen works from the artist’s compelling career including type design, wood engravings, decorative book papers, maps and commercial work.

The exhibition is co-curated by video artist and author Katharine Meynell, grand-daughter of Francis Meynell, who recently shone a light on Friedlander’s little-known story by writing and producing ‘Elizabeth’, a film about the artist.

Read more here

Exhibition: 'I Don't Know Her Name, But I Know Her Work'

'I Don't Know Her Name, But I Know Her Work' is a display of graphic design by current students of Central Saint Martins along with work from alumni and staff of one of its predecessor colleges, the Central School of Arts and Crafts.

This display coincides with The London Transport Museum exhibition Poster Girls: A Century of Art and Design, which features many female designers who studied or taught at the Central School. Current graphic design students have each selected a piece of work from the Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection designed by one of the Central school designers featured in Poster Girls, and made new work in response.

This new work is influenced by the methods and materials used in the designs selected from the Museum, as well as the wider context surrounding these designs. As with the Poster Girls exhibition, a particular concern is the lack of representation of women in graphic design history. Students taking part in this project are questioning the lack of diversity in graphic design history and calling for a more inclusive approach.

Until 5 February 2018

Central Saint Martins
Granary Building
1 Granary Square
King's Cross, London N1C 4AA

Visit the website for more information

Exhibition: Poster Girls – A century of art and design

Exhibition of female artists who have worked for London Transport and Transport for London including well-known designers, such as Mabel Lucie Attwell, Laura Knight, Enid Marx and Zandra Rhodes, alongside lesser known individuals who nonetheless changed the way Londoners viewed their city.

Until January 2019 at London Transport Museum
www.ltmuseum.co.uk/whats-on/exhibitions

Read a review here

100 Years

Exhibition

100 YEARS OF GRAPHIC COMMUNICATION BY WOMEN AT CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS

16 February - 23 March 2016

Central Saint Martins, 1 Granary Square
London NC1 4AA

Astrid Stavro / Cath Caldwell / Clare Skeats / Eleanor Crow / Heather 'Herry' Perry / Helen Ingham / Morag Myerscough / Sunny Park / Rebecca Ross / Valeria Hedman / Nina Chakrabarti / Kat Garner / Scarlet Evans / Bianca Wendt / Sroop Sunar / Rachel ‘Ray’ Marshall / Muriel Jackson / Dora Batty / Freda Lingstrom / Margaret Calkin James / Pearl Binder / Kathleen Hale / Nicolete Gray / Peggy Fortnum / Enid Marx / Judith Kerr / Jo Brocklehurst / Margaret Calvert / Helen Oxenbury / Stefanie Posavec / Katy Hepburn / Su Huntley & Donna Muir / Claire Leighton / Alexandra Epps / Debbie Cook / Sheena Calvert / Sian Cook / Lucienne Roberts / Rebecca Wright / Catherine Dixon / Rose Epple / Amelia Noble / Rathna Ramanathan / Lizzie Finn / Catherine Anyango / Rebecca & Mike / Lydia Blagden / Emma Woodland & Jess Kohl / Jayne Alexander and Violetta Boxill / Rachita Saraogi, Marina Viktorsson & Rebecca Thompson / Sara De Bondt / Julia Woollams / Kath Tudball / Tina Tsang / Syd Hausman / Carla Matoses / Lizzie Oxby / Alessia Mazzarella / See Red Women's Workshop / Jenny Maizels / Posy Simmonds / Sophie Thomas / Miho Aishima / Sinem Erkas / May Safwat / Ruth Sykes & Emily Wood

http://graphicsukwomen.com/

Mildred Friedman

Known to many as Mickey, Mildred Friedman served as the editor of Design Quarterly and was the Walker Art Center design curator for much of the ’70s and ’80s. She organized a series of groundbreaking exhibitions, sometimes in collaboration with Martin Friedman, such as Sottsass/Superstudio: Mindscapes (1973); New Learning Spaces and Places (1974); Nelson/Eames/Girard/Propst: The Design Process at Herman Miller (1975); De Stijl, 1917–1931: Visions of Utopia (1982); The Architecture of Frank Gehry (1986), the architect’s first major museum exhibition; Tokyo: Form and Spirit (1986), featuring the work of Japanese designers such as Arata Isozaki, Tadanori Yokoo, Toyo Ito, Tadao Ando, and Eiko Ishioka; Architecture Tomorrow (1988–1991), a series of installations undertaken by Frank Israel, Morphosis, Todd Williams/Billie Tsien, Stanley Saitowitz, Diller+Scofidio, and Steven Holl; and Graphic Design in America: A Visual Language History (1989), the first large-scale museum survey of the field in the United States.

Read more here.

Barbara Nessim: An Artful Life

Check out this exhibition of feminist illustrator Barbara Nessim

Barbara Nessim
15 February – 19 May 2013
V&A Museum, London
Free admission

Watch an interview vimeo with her here

See Red Women's Workshop

An exhibition about the See Red Women's Workshop collective and their associated ephemera of protest and Women's Liberation.

Dedicated to the ideals of the second wave feminist movement, and with the founding objective of designing and producing images that explored and questioned the role of women in society – ‘the personal is political’ – See Red Women's Workshop was an alternative screen print collective focused on solidarity and revolt.

5 December 2012 – 13 January 2013
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall
London SW1Y 5AH

Jo Spence

Image of someone setting type for The Hackney Flashers Collective, a collective of feminist and socialist women who produced exhibitions such as ‘Women and Work’ and ‘Who’s Holding the Baby’. More information on the recent exhibition of the work of Jo Spence, founder member of the collective, can be found on the website of Studio Voltaire.

Benchmarks

An exhibition of work by Eileen Boxer, Elaine Lustig Cohen, Louise Fili, Lucille Tenazas, Paula Scher, Gail Anderson, Carin Goldberg, held in New York in June 2011.

Steven Heller: Why an exhibition now with this focus?

Abby Goldstein: As professor/director of the graphic design concentration at Fordham, part of my teaching approach is to curate exhibitions about design and typography. This exhibition came about from a discussion with Paul Shaw about what we felt was a lack of recognition of great women designers. Lindsay [Reichart] was taking a class in Feminism and Art and was looking to do a Senior Thesis project that combined her interests in Art History, Feminism in Art and Graphic Design. It seemed like the perfect combination.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Shirley Craven

Born in Hull in 1934, Shirley Craven studied art at Hull College of Art and then printed textiles at the Royal College of Art, 1955-58.

In 1959, aged 25, she started work at Hull Traders, a textiles firm founded two years earlier in Willesden, London, by entrepreneur Tristam Hull, who had ‘ambitious artistic aspirations’, (Jackson, 2007, p.104). In 1963, she became Chief Designer and a Director of the firm, where she worked for nearly two decades. In 1960 Design magazine described the company as having a ‘high reputation for producing adventurous and exciting designs’, which they attributed to the tight control of Craven, who displayed a ‘dramatic and original handling of colour and pattern’ (Design, 1960, p.185)

Check out the Flickr account that features some of her work here, or the book about the Hull Traders here.

Jacqueline de Jong

Dutch artist and graphic designer Jacqueline de Jong joined the Situationist International in 1960. De Jong suggested the publication of an English language newsletter in November of 1960, to be co-edited with British Situationist Alexander Trocchi. The publication was widely discussed at Situationist conferences in 1961, and the first issue of The Situationist Times was published in May of 1962. De Jong was determined to produce 'a completely free magazine, based on the most creative of the Situationist ideas'.

An exhibition of The Situationist Times opens in at Boo Hooray in New York on 9 May 2012.
More information here or here.

All Work and Low Pay: The Story of Women and Work

An exhibition curated by Dr Clare Rose at the Women's Library (until August 23rd): "‘It’s time to change the perception that, in the past, the majority of women in Britain were housewives. Women’s work has always been essential to the economy, even though they had to work incredibly long hours to support themselves and their families. The fantastic array of pictures, books, posters and objects in the exhibition shows how much women have achieved. But campaigning continues: there is still a pay gap between men and women."

The Women's Library is located in Old Castle Street, next to London Metropolitan University's Calcutta House.

re.act.feminism

Re.act.feminism #2 – A Performing Archive is a continually expanding, temporary and living performance archive travelling through six European countries from 2011 to 2013.

It presents feminist, gendercritical and queer performance art by over 120 artists and artist collectives from the 1960s to the beginning of the 1980s, as well as contemporary positions. The research focus is on Eastern and Western Europe, the Mediterranean and Middle East, the US and several countries in Latin America. On its route through Europe this temporary archive will continue to expand through local research and cooperation with art academies and universities. It will also be ‘animated’ through exhibitions, screenings, performances and discussions along the way, which will continuously contribute to the archive. More info on www.reactfeminism.org

Image: Ewa Partum, ‘Selfidentification,’ Warsaw 1980, Photo-montage (from a series of 8 images), Courtesy the artist

WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution

WACK! — an exhibition held in Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in 2007 — explored both the international foundation and continuing legacy of feminist art. The catalogue, designed by Lorraine Wild and Victoria Lam, "is a rich survey that works as a companion to the show in addition to being a chronicle of the impact of the women’s liberation movement that sought to end inequities and discrimination against women because of gender alone." The exhibition included work by Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Yoko Ono, Cindy Sherman and Sheila Levrant de Bretteville amongst many others. "Although not all of the artists are feminists, they are all placed within a feminist context, a strategy that brings life to the exhibition and catalogue." Step magazine More info on MOCA.

Yayoi Kusama

Finally Tate Modern is presenting another major solo retrospective of a female artist.
But why did they use a half-naked, sexy, submissive portrait of her on the poster?

The W Project

Words of Wisdom is the second exhibition from the W Project, scheduled again to coincide with International Women’s Day. They are inviting an exciting mix of female talent to contribute a creative response to the question: what are your words of wisdom?

The exhibition opens with a private view on the 8th of March 2012 at The KK Outlet in London. Events taking place alongside the exhibition include a symposium dinner featuring talks by women who have succeeded in their creative field, a film screening and a youth workshop.

For more information about the exhibition or the W Project in general, please e-mail info@thewproject.co.uk or visit the-w-project.tumblr.com/

Doing It in Public

Doin’ It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman's Building comprises an exhibition, two scholarly publications, and series of public events that document, contextualize and pay tribute to the groundbreaking work of feminist artists and art cooperatives that were centered in and around the Los Angeles Woman’s Building (downtown L.A.) in the 1970s and 1980s. 

The exhibition website is here

A tour of the exhibition is here

And some suggested reading can be found here