Art by Gabby Murray
“Conversation, Not Spectacle,” the title of the Women’s Art Collection’s latest exhibition, is adapted from Griselda Pollock’s opening address for the Art Collection in 1992. There she said that “the artists and their works speak as much to each other as to us the onlooker. Hanging here together, they provide not a dumb spectacle but a model of conversation.” Three decades after this opening address, the exhibition brings us to Murray Edwards’s brutalist spaceship up on Castle Hill to look back at these conversations.
This exhibition results from a research project, spanning over two years, which examined the history and development of the collection. Ella Nixon, the curator, aimed at representing the collection’s very essence in her work. Divided into six parts, the exhibition begins with a triptych of portraits by Coral Woodbury, created especially for the collection, capturing Mary Kelly, Lubaina Himid and Maud Sulter on the pages of H.W. Janson’s A History of Art, first published in 1968. Next to the portraits is a print of the Guerilla Girls’ iconic work The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist. These two pieces, in conversation, capture the collection’s ethos: celebrating women artists whose work was, for too long, not even a footnote in official art histories, like indeed in Janson’s book, which did not mention women until its 1986 reprint. Mary Kelly was instrumental in the creation of the collection, being the inaugural artist-in-residence at what was then New Hall (in 1985/86). She gifted the college her series “Extase,” which has been hanging in the infamous Dome, Murray Edwards’ hall, ever since. Himid and Sulter (who were partners at the time), were two of the first artists to donate works to the collection. Meanwhile, the Guerilla Girls’ poster is arguably one of the most famous pieces of art commenting on the place awarded to women in the art world, and indicates the collections’ more militant intentions.
The next wall in the exhibition attempts to capture the foundational event in the collection’s history, the 1991 “Artist Appeal.” Artworks cover the entire wall, hung salon-style. Bordering on cramped, the painting’s tight-knit arrangement effectively translates into physical space the overwhelming response to the College’s letters inviting artists to donate works to the collection. Within three months of the appeal, the college had received 21 works, and by September 1992 over 70 pieces of art had been donated. The collection continued to grow steadily over the next three decades, and now houses over 600 works by over 300 artists. The following wall explores the relationship between the college and the collection. It features two works that usually hang above the high table in the Dome, and as such have become truly emblematic pieces in the Collection, Maggi Hambling’s Gulf Women Prepare for War (1992) and Paula Rego’s Inês de Castro (2014), created for the College’s 60th anniversary. Of similar sizes and colour palettes, and both dealing with themes of violence, gender and nationalism, these works usually face each other, capturing the idea of “conversation, not spectacle” outlined by Pollock. As a former Murray Edwards student, it was very strange to see them out of place. In fact, my first instinct was to run up to the Dome and see what it looked like without these pieces. Their implied absence from their usual location highlighted the close relationship some artworks have gained with their specific environment, the way they have become a part of the college’s architecture. This symbiotic relationship between the artworks and the architecture is one of the Collection’s defining features, and this display truly brought this to the fore. But seeing them brought down to eye level also enabled me to experience the pieces in a new light, noticing the texture of the paint and intricate details, in what was to me the most striking display of the exhibition.
By contrast the next wall, titled “Decentering the Gaze: Women in Art,” was less successful in its aims, though the individual pieces were interesting. Wishing to tackle an extremely wide topic (“the figure of the woman in art,” it appears) through four works, these pieces interrogated the nude figure, and more generally, the question of the representation of women in art. I would have appreciated a more unexpected display confronting some of the tensions at work within the category of “woman artist,” who embodies that term, what themes it encourages, whether such a category is still truly useful. Thinking about the nude, for example, brought to mind one of my favourite pieces in the collection – Laura Havenhand’s Load Up Your Laundry – a provocative and humorous painting of a naked man reclining in a launderette, holding up a box of laundry powder between his legs. This different take on the nude could easily, and productively, draw out a more nuanced conversation on the question of objectification in art; such a line of inquiry was not pursued. Regardless, this display also exhibited one of the pieces I find most moving in the entire collection, Claudia Clare’s Remembering Atefeh (2013), an homage to sixteen year old Iranian girl Atefeh Rajavi Sahaaleh who was sentenced to death after denouncing the sexual assaults she experienced at the age of twelve by a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Clare made this vessel piece with a group of (mostly Iranian) friends in 2011, and smashed the pot in protest in front of the Iranian Embassy in London. She then reconstructed the pot using gold to colour the edges (reminiscent of Japanese wabi-sabi) and left out a significant to enable the spectator of the pot anew to see the only remaining portrait of Atefeh, on the inside wall of the structure, originally from her Iranian ID card.
The two following displays look at the present and future of the collection: the first includes video interview of four artists nestled between two of their pieces (Eileen Cooper’s Perpetual Spring and Anya Paintsil’s Blodeuwedd), while the second includes a list of every artist in the collection written on the wall. The exhibition closes on Angels Whispering in the Night by Faith Ringgold and Grace Matthews, a piece donated in 2021 by the astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a college alumna. The inclusion of these pieces makes the collection feel very alive, highlighting both its breadth and its significance for alumnae.
Usually, the very contained aspect of the Women’s art collection’s exhibition space, one corridor running alongside the fountain court, is an aspect I really appreciate about it. I think its size contributes to its accessibility, enabling visitors to spend time with a few pieces at a time and reflect upon the curation in a way that larger exhibitions, overwhelming viewers with choice, or its illusion, do not always allow. However, in this case, I think that a contained exhibition, while perfectly executing its aim of telling the story of how the collection came to be, was intrinsically unable to capture some of the abundance that makes the Women’s Art Collection so special. The beauty of the Women’s Art Collection, or perhaps of Murray Edwards as a college, is that it is a museum that is lived in, worked in, dwelled in. Its brutalist architecture, designed by Chamberlin, Powell, and Bon (who also designed the Barbican in London), with its high ceilings, long corridors and wide windows, continually facilitate unexpected encounters with artworks. Most of my memories in college as an undergraduate are tied to some of the artworks: the giant and quite scary lady hanging in the staircase where I lived as a first year (Northsea Bathers by Marcelle Hanselaar); Tracy Emin’s Birds, across the entrance to the library, reading “you inspire me with your determination and I love you,” acting as a salve during revisions; lunch in the gardens near Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture (Ascending Form, Gloria).
Of course, some of these works are not accessible to the public, but this ethos of art as something to live amongst, not to hide away, is what can be truly transformative about this collection. “Conversation not Spectacle” is a beautiful introduction to the collection, and I loved its insistence on conversation and relationships. The guide highlights that Himid donated her first piece because she was persuaded by Maud Sulter, and that Sulter then invited Claudia Clare to donate work later in the 1990s. It evokes the friendship and mentorship that tied Charlotte Hodes and Paula Rego, and mentions that Eileen Cooper was inspired to donate Perpetual Spring (2016) because of the shared colour scheme between that piece and Paula Rego and Maggi Hambling’s ones displayed in the Dome. Through this exhibition, it becomes apparent that the Women’s Art Collection is not just interested in providing a corrective to the sexism that continues to shape much of the art world, but is also invested in rethinking our perception of art itself – emphasising collective work, exchanges, and a feminist (and political) investment in work rather than promoting an idea of a disembodied, lone artistic genius. Again Coral Woodbury’s piece, opening the exhibition, perfectly encapsulates this ethos. The exhibition being a celebration of the collection’s history, it was not surprising that it told an overall linear, straightforward story. Still, I would have loved to see something reflecting some of the tensions that are sure to have shaped the collection’s history. What were the initial reactions to its installation? Was there resistance, seemingly insurmountable obstacles, to setting it up? Did certain artists politically refuse or radically embrace the category of “woman artist,” and did this shape the collection? With the ending of the exhibition focusing very much on the Collection, as a future-oriented, moving assemblage, I can only hope that these tensions and questions will continue into animated discussions, and accompanying exhibitions exploring those intricacies.
There is no doubt that “Conversation, not Spectacle” will bring more people to the Women’s Art Collection, which is a precious part of Cambridge’s cultural landscape. But even more so, I hope that visitors will take the time to wander around some of the publicly-accessible corridors, stopping for instance to look at Faith Ringgold’s incredible pieces that lead away from the Porters’ Lodge. And then I hope they’ll sit in the Art’s Café to have their own conversation, surrounded by art, experiencing the collection as it is lived.
The Women’s Art Collection: Conversation not Spectacle is on at Murray Edwards College until the 23rd of February.
By Sophie Marie Niang
The Camera 