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In Celebration of Grass Roots and Grass Widows: Women's Art Collaborations in Glasgow

This output builds on my longstanding research interest in feminist art practices, and provided me with an opportunity to make a contribution to discussions of such practices in Glasgow. While much has been made of the success of the Glasgow art scene, often considered synonymous with a DIY approach to art and exhibition making, very little has been written about the specific contribution of women artists and the more general relationship between feminist art practices and a DIY ethos emblematized by the tenement house gallery. Selecting one compelling example of a cross-generational DIY feminist group exhibition held during Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2012, this essay situates women artists' collaborations in Glasgow within an international context of feminist exhibition making that uses the domestic space as site. Key research activities for this essay included: email interviews with the Strohwitwe exhibiting artists and a select range of significant women artist-curators such as Adele Patrick, Lucy MacKenzie and Marianne Greated, who have played a pivotal role in the Glasgow art scene; archival research at Glasgow Women's Library and contextual research on international feminist art practices and domestic spaces. This article was written for the inaugural online issue of established art publication Map magazine, a long-time supporter and promoter of critical discussion on Scottish art. The research undertaken for this paper has subsequently developed into research on feminist methodologies, both in terms of art practice and art criticism, as advanced in my conference paper on ‘Found Footage Film as a Feminist Art Practice,’ part of a pre-constituted panel with Professor Karen Boyle and Dr Sarah Neely from University of Stirling, for the MeCCSA conference 2013, one aspect of which I am currently writing up as an article for a peer-review journal.