Do you keep thinking there must be another way

About

Do you keep thinking there must be another way is a group exhibition that addresses strategies of representation, resistance and withdrawal. Including sculpture, painting, performance and video this exhibition considers behaviours towards, and resistance of, presiding power structures through honesty, parody and poetry.

The exhibition explores an intergenerational dialogue between seven artists to consider how imposed hierarchies, within professional and personal spheres, can generate discussion around gender, race and economics.

Among the works presented in the exhibition is a concise fragment of original text from Lee Lozano’s 1971 notebook announcing her decision to boycott women. It was an act of unapologetic self-sabotage and rejection of her identification as a ‘woman artist’; as Lozano wrote, ‘I have no identity. I will be human first, artist second’.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s first self-consciously proclaimed feminist art collective, Polvo de Gallina Negra (PdGN; Black hen powder), formed in 1983, used humour to subvert the machismo prevalent in 1980s Mexico. During their inclusion in a popular mainstream TV news segment, the artists enrol an impertinent male news anchor to become a ‘Mother for a day’, insisting on motherhood as an intellectual labour.

Georgia Horgan presents new work encompassing embroidered period costume and a script for a film. Based on her ongoing research into the ‘political pornography’ genre and satirical representations of sex workers from the English Civil War period, her work suggests a feminist strategy for re-writing literary histories.

Spanning across the two floors of Mimosa House, this exhibition includes historic and contemporary works that explore acts of exclusion and authorship relating to identity, labour and belonging.

The exhibition is curated by Cicely Farrer, Daria Khan and Jessica Vaughan

Generously supported by Arts Council England and Creative Scotland