Resist be modern (again) (2019), co-curated with Stefanie Seibold, John Hansard Gallery
The exhibition and publication Resist: be modern (again) extended my collaboration with Stefanie Seibold and included our research of Berenice Abbott. Whilst we knew the Paris portrait photographs by Berenice Abbott, it was through researcher Jasmine Rault’s writing that we understood the significance of these images as a record of a network of women in general and of non-heterosexual women in particular. We brought together works by these collaborative artists, textile designers, creatives and performers who had been famous in their lifetimes, but whose names and practices had disappeared from view in the decades since the 1930s. The exhibition Resist: be modern (again) included displays of historic and archival materials alongside current works by artists revisiting these early practices in new and contemporary installations, videos, sculpture and photography. Examples of the archival works included an installation of the 1930s printing blocks of the collaborative textile designers Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher, a display of issues of the avant-garde magazine The Little Review, alongside photographs of its editors Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap by Berenice Abbott. Textile and steel-frame display systems based on those by designer Lilly Reich of the 1920s housed archival artefacts and contemporary installations. Archival photographs from the 1920s showed the legendary Paris performer Ada ‘Bricktop’ Smith’s salon from the same period, and a video retrieved from the BBC archive showed Bricktop’s appearance on Michael Parkinson’s chat show in 1978, towards the end of her life. A remake of Berenice Abbott’s patented photographer’s Kit-Jak coat, 1947, gave presence to the practical challenges for photographers; Abbott designed the coat with many pockets to house everything from lipstick to lenses, film backs and light meters.
The exhibition included contemporary works and installations referencing 1920s-30s practices by Becky Beasley, Madeleine Bernstorff, Tessa Boffin, Ricarda Denzer, Andrea Geyer, Moira Hille, Alice Maude-Roxby, Nick Mauss, Ursula Mayer, Falke Pisano, Ingrid Pollard, Tanoa Sasraku, Katie Schwab, Stefanie Seibold, Megan Francis Sullivan, S. Louisa Wei, Riet Wijnen, Gillian Wylde and curator Beatriz Herraez. The catalogue includes essays by Madeleine Bernstorff, Laura Cottingham, Bridget Elliott, Sian Norris, Gemma Romain, T.L. Cowan & Jasmine Rault and Shane Vogel.