The Guerrilla Girls turned 30; let’s talk about women
Inspired by the social activist group Guerrilla Girls, we take a look at some important female artists working now.
With contemporary art having a great focus on social and political issues and agendas, the subject of equality between the sexes in the art world is an important subject under much debate. Many say female artists are not given fair treatment or enough exposure by the art institutions however others argue that there are plenty of female artists and that it is the pay that is widely unequal.
Many female artists directly address the topic of gender inequality in both art and society as a whole. The anonymous group known as Guerrilla Girls is a massive source of feminist activist inspiration for bringing about racial and gender equality. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the group's founding, we think now is an especially relevant time to look at some women who make a significant contribution to art and creativity.
Michele Abeles’ work is about digital age of images, commodity and how people are reduced to being as insignificant as mundane objects. She combines everyday objects with nude males, using a photography process that flattens the collage of objects and people into a camouflaged Where’s Wally work which slowly reveals more parts of itself as the viewer looks on, literally reducing people to consumable generic items. For the artist, the nudes photographed in her work are as insignificant as the objects surrounding it. Abeles uses copyrighted images found on Google and edits them to create altered scales making the image almost surreal. This work is in response to how images are viewed in the digital age. We see so many layers of visual information, how much do we absorb it and in what way?
The infamous Tracey Emin is most famous for works like Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, a tent with walls of appliquéd names inside and My Bed, an installation of Emin’s unmade bed of used condoms and bloody, dirty underwear. Despite this work being some years ago now, Emin is still very present in contributing to the art world as well as selling her work to high bidders. She is an important role model as a successful and motivated female artist who makes no apologies.
Who Made Your Pants is a campaign running in Southampton, England. Becky John founds the brand and she buys material from big underwear companies at the end of the season to prevent it being wasted. Formed especially to empower women, the co-operative employ female refugees through support agencies to make and sew the pants. However, they also run kind of pop up environments where the customer can chose the fabric and sew their own pair of pants. This kind of work, I believe, is a very effective way of bringing participation based social art into the public sphere and addressing the taboo of making money from conceptual art.
Ghada Amers work addresses gender and sexuality within art using embroidery and paint to reference abstracted pornographic images of women. She challenges the male dominance and ownership of art. She uses paint abstractly, which she sees as having been made symbolic and dominant in history by men. And so by using this, she is occupying a territory, which has previously been denied to women. Simultaneously, by using uses embroidery, a practice associated with the feminine, to make a further political statement about gender.
Kara Walker uses black paper cut outs to make silhouettes exploring race, gender, sexuality and other social issues. She depicts sex and slavery and deems the viewers discomfort necessary when confronted with this. Her work investigates the dark capabilities of what people can and have done throughout history, and investigates the inability to accept the past.
The argument that feminism is no longer necessary because the sexes are equal is a statement that is wildly inaccurate due to many reasons in western culture alone, without taking into account the many parts of the world in which women aren’t afforded basic human rights. We still a long way to go inside and outside of art until we reach equality but these artists are a part of making that a reality.
Making art about food waste: Interview with artist Louiza Hamidi
For Louiza Hamidi, it is our conceptual exploration that reclaims moments as art. And she likes to make art about food waste.
For Louiza Hamidi, it is our conceptual exploration that reclaims moments as art. And she likes to make art about food waste.
I met Louiza Hamidi a few years ago when we studied together for our fine art degree, we have remained friends and collaborated on many works to varying degrees. Louiza and I collaborate on our pop up installation Food Waste Café, where we cook and serve food waste to visitors in a restaurant setting, but Louiza has been very busy with food waste since her degree. She has embarked on a food waste tour of England, exploring how food waste is managed in other cities, she has completed a half marathon fuelled by food waste and she has invested a great deal of time into collecting food waste from supermarkets and distributing it through Curb, an active food waste campaign operating on a pay as you feel basis.
With the new French law coming into effect requiring supermarkets to deal with food waste more responsibly; I speak to Louiza about what she’s doing and her thoughts on the current food waste situation.
How did you become interested in the issue of food waste?
I had been experimenting with different ideas around ‘sustainable living’ for years, becoming increasingly aware of my own consumption and critical of consumer culture. Foraging for food in bins was just the next step on the journey! I became very interested in the creative form of eating with one another, whilst simultaneously exploring the use of artistic processes as a tool for socio-political change.
How do supermarkets react with your requests for their food waste?
I am yet to collect from the bigger supermarkets but I do collect from local stores, community events and food banks. Requests can be a bit of a shock at first. I think people fear judgement, so sometimes owners or staff lie to me claiming they have zero waste. Once, I had been asking for food from an organization that told me multiple times that they didn’t have waste. Out of the blue, I received a call one-day saying that my request had not left their mind and that they had come to terms with the fact that they do have waste. She asked if I could come in and pick up the surplus that she now believed to exist! It was an amazing, amazing moment for me. We’d planted an idea, and been patient. We’d built trust and challenged pre-existing fear/shame about waste. It really confirmed that there is so much potential when stores say no, as it’s the invisible thought processes that continue out of our control that will make positive impact.
What is Curb?
Curb is solely a food waste campaign. We have a business plan that works toward putting itself out of business.
Curb recently faced the issue of turning up to an event with cooked food and being told they couldn’t serve it. Does Curb face these kinds of obstacles often?
This was the first time that we’d turned up and been told we couldn’t serve our food. This was not because of health and safety, or because the food was once deemed ‘waste’ but because there was confusion within the organization of the festival. It is a real-life problem that caterers who are charging prices for food at festivals, are going to need to cover their overheads. The caterer was just upset and fearful of other people sharing food as she saw us as competition. We were very understanding, compromised a great deal, but we were not going to let our beautiful food go to waste!
How do you deal with the legality of serving out of date food?
I just do it. I think there are times when corporate law has its place, and there are times when it doesn’t. I feel the issue of food waste is because we don’t listen to common law. We are people of the planet and there is food that is safe to eat being wasted, due to profiteering, constructed policies and beauty ideals. The bottom line of Curb is to disrupt this. However, in order to acquire and rescue the most food from being wasted, I have to compromise with the system at the moment and make sure there is no reason why food businesses can say that they ‘can’t’ give us their surplus. I abide by everything we need to in order to push forward our campaign – but I’m always honest about the contradictions and make sure I share these kinds of dilemmas with people in conversations.
Do you think the new laws in France are useful and will they be effective?
I think that the use and effectiveness that will come out of them is essentially getting food waste onto public and political agenda. I don’t think it will make much difference to the reality of food waste, as laws are very easy to get around if you’re a big corporation that makes lots of money and works with the government.
I think it’s excellent as a first step, but I find it so problematic! Distributing food waste to charities and non-profits is actually just moving the responsibility to those in the third sector. This has been hugely devastating for decades and is never a solution! It merely removes moral, social, ethical and environmental conscience away from those systems and institutions that cause it and on top of that, it passes on the weight, time, cost and conscience to those working with extreme effort to combat their mistakes. We need to get to the root, but I appreciate this kind of legislative change (whether truly enforced or not) is definitely the first step in the right direction.
And finally, how can we make changes to food waste in the UK or even globally?
As a human race, I think we need to rediscover our connection with food. I believe that we are only so wasteful because we have little to no respect for food. We are completely blinded by a construction of what food is – hidden away from all parts of the food chain and only exposed to food as a commodity to buy/sell. Most of us only experience food at the Retail part of the system.
If we could disrupt this idea individually and on a society level, we would have so much more respect for food. We need to become conscious of what is on our plate, where it comes from, how it grows, what it does to sustain life, how much value it has and what it means to share food with others… then I don’t think we would create policies, legislation or practices that puts colossal amounts of good food to waste!
This is what Pay As You Feel is all about for me. This is why Curb exists.
Art and activism; French supermarkets and food waste in the UK
With the recent news of France’s new law prohibiting supermarkets from discarding edible food, there has been a sharp increase in discussion about food waste in the public eye.
With the recent news of France’s new law prohibiting supermarkets from discarding edible food, there has been a sharp increase in discussion about food waste in the public eye.
France’s new food waste law is certainly a step in the right direction regarding responsible management of waste by corporations; however, this triumph is only a small part of the way to go and is problematic in many ways. Though public perception may see this development as the supermarket waste problem solved, many UK supermarkets have been claiming for years that they send their food waste to charities. This may be a surprise to those celebrating the Tesco CEO’s only recent public commitment to do the same; Tesco are possibly just catching up with their competitors. Waitrose’s website for example states that food fit for consumption is donated to local charities. From my own experience of dumpster diving, I know for a fact that this is incredibly misleading at the very least. My friends and I have recovered over a tonne in a few months from supermarket bins in one town.
Another issue with the French law is that it doesn’t address the cause for so much waste, the problem is simply being redirected, the responsibility is being passed on. Many charities that gratefully accept donations of food are given much more than they can distribute, meaning they still have to throw it away and in addition they must pay for the waste disposal. It is also unlikely that charities will have an arrangement for anaerobic digestion and so the food ends up in landfill, a worse fate than before. Companies like FareShare in the UK accept food from supermarkets and distribute it to charities. However, Fareshare disposes of donated food after a certain time period of having received it regardless of its use by date.
With waste being wrapped in so many layers of secrecy, law and bureaucracy it can leave individuals feeling powerless and uncertain of how to make an impact or change but there are many artists and movements in the UK taking action within their community to get people talking and bring these issues to the public agenda.
Disco Soup is a food waste movement sweeping Europe, an unlikely combination of food waste, cooking and disco. Originating in Germany as Schnippel Disko organised by Slow Food Youth Deutschland, the movement has been going strong for a few years now, recently having grown to be very popular in France as Disco Soupe. At these events, participants peel and cut salvaged veg in a party environment to create a dish to eat. The movement carries with it no element of monetary exchange, no sense of entitlement but a whole lot of community atmosphere. It is free flowing, anyone can organise one; simply combine a venue, a DJ, food waste and lots of dance ready participants.
Another inspirational and devoted activist in food waste is Louiza Hamidi, an artist I lived with and collaborated with during our degree. We continue to work together with our pop up installation/participation Food Waste Café, where we cook and serve food waste to visitors in a restaurant setting but aside from that Louiza is incredibly active with food waste in her community. She now runs Curb, an active food waste campaign operating on a pay as you feel basis, investing a great deal of time into collecting food waste from supermarkets and distributing it to the public. Despite the legally questionable ground of distributing food that has passed its sell by date, she is persistence and challenges the logic and validity of these laws allowing such waste to continue.
Artists like these are part of the driving force for changes in law, attitude and practices regarding waste, if not ethical conduct entirely. Although the fight to stop waste has already been going for decades, now is an important time to focus on waste and artists who work with these issues are crucial to inspire and motivate others to take direct action in combating them. Despite any criticisms France's new law faces, it reflects that this is an issue the public care about, it means supermarkets are legally bound to do what they claim to do already and it is certainly a step in the right direction.
Visionaries and reporters united : Unknown Fields Division
This summer on the salt flats of south-west Bolivia, a pan-global group of artists, designers, architects and filmmakers are digging down through the caked up layers of sodium chloride.
This summer on the salt flats of south-west Bolivia, a pan-global group of artists, designers, architects and filmmakers are digging down through the caked up layers of sodium chloride. Their aim is to find a chemical that laid unused for 140 years after its discovery. A largely unwanted and impure element, good for little more than turning flames red and refusing to disconnect from aluminium.
This is lithium, and it is now the beating pulse of mass communication that lies at the heart of the green revolution. The group are the Unknown Fields Division, a collective that undertake artistic studies into the mechanisms of a modern world.
In Bolivia, the group will turn its attention to lithium, or ’grey gold’. The fascination in what is to a cursory glancer dirt stems from its seeming lack of worth. For years it was underrated, hoisted up with the elemental also rans. A neighbour of dull old beryllium. This all changed however, when a Stamford graduate, M Stanley Whttingham, suggested that the then nuclear associated chemical might serve better in batteries. After 30 years of development he proved right. Lithium is now the core component of every electronic mobile device and the future of electronic cars.
The goal of Unknown Field’s trip is to study lithium, to dissect its new found cultural significance and then, through written reports, films and sculptures, to communicate these findings to the wider world.
With all of Unknown Field’s work, there is a focus both on the end product, the smart-phone in your pocket, and its origins. For Bolivia, this is a found reserve that has added billions to the country’s economy. On a previous trip, it was a town turned upside down by global demand.
Unknown Fields Winter 14 Expedition
Liam Young + Kate Davies
Showrell Dir. by Rich Seymour + Jonathan Skerritt
In 2014 Unknown Fields undertook a three week journey up the global supply chain, tracing back the path of consumer goods taken from the factories of China and into our homes. What they encountered was the brutal side effects of an industrial machine. Situated in northern most China, Baotou, or Deer City, was a settlement of 97,000 in 1950. It is now home to 2.5 million and is the world’s biggest supplier of rare earth minerals.
The environmental impact of such an unprecedented boom is severe. Vast refineries sprawl endlessly through the cities neon lit streets. Massive pipes erupt from the ground and run along roadways and pavements, arching into the air to cross roads like bridges. Despite such a man-made, synthetic dent, the work produced by Unknown Fields is free of condemnation.
One piece was formed from radioactive clay from the city’s polluted lake. It is a series of ceramic pots modelled on traditional ming vases, with each proportioned on the amount of toxic waste produced by the city’s use of different minerals.
A vessel takes shape, formed from the amount of toxic material produced in the manufacture of a single mobile phone. Film Still © Toby Smith/Unknown Fields
Another is a video of visceral quality. It looks inside the factories, glimpsing the might of un-fathomably powerful machines. The effect is something similar to Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi.
The result of such considered work is profound. The approach is subtle, with the viewer coaxed rather than forced to reflect on the weighty topics. From the Texaco oil fields of the Ecuadorian Amazon to The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the subjects are massive, and a personal, emotive response undeniable.
All images via © Unknown Fields Division