Challenging postfeminism in Britain with three exhibitions, 1990-1999

Thesis

This study uses three exhibitions to challenge the discourse of postfeminist aesthetics in Britain during the 1990s. Interpreted using Clare Hemmings’ notions of loss, progress and return in feminist storytelling, these aesthetics are challenged by ‘experimenting with how we might tell stories differently rather than telling different stories’.1 In Chapter 1, Castlemilk Womanhouse (Castlemilk Estate, Glasgow, 1990) will be considered an example of a return narrative, given that it opposed postfeminism by upholding and ameliorating the material conditions of women involved. In Chapter 2, the notion of the impolitical will be tested as a means of recognising and speaking about a politics of refusal in art, nuancing narratives of both feminist progress and loss in Bad Girls (Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1993; Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, 1994). Finally, Chapter 3 will consider the exhibition Private Views (Estonian Art Museum, Tallinn, 1998; Institute of Contemporary Art, Dunaújváros, 1999), where it is argued that the impolitical can function relative to specific political narratives, for example in the former East, potentially inflecting narratives of both loss and progress. Overall, this study argues that by recognising the interrelationship between social reproduction, political undecidability, and the feminist histories in these case studies, it is possible to unfix and reinterpret stories of art that imply the loss of feminism.

Authors: Cartwright, B

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-kqbba9wgk
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English