Lost and Found: Material Precarity in British Sculpture by Women, 1978-1993

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The late 1970s witnessed significant gender exclusion in the art world despite advancing feminist actions across society. Many art schools endorsed the sleeves-rolled-up physicality of welding combined with a combative approach to 'crit' processes: entrenched methods established during Anthony Caro's tenure at St Martin's School of Art. Exhibition opportunities for women were scarce (Royal Academy 1972), (Tucker, Hayward Gallery 1975), (Compton, Hayward Gallery 1977). By 1993 a growing number of women were receiving international attention. In 1991, Cornelia Parker exploded a garden shed, suspending the charred fragments from the ceiling and Anya Gallaccio left hundreds of gerberas to rot in Karsten Schubert's gallery window. Rachel Whiteread became the first woman to win the Turner Prize in 1993 for 'House' (1993, destroyed 1994): the cast interior of a London home. I will map these transformative years, pinpointing the actions and breakthroughs that facilitated this shift from substantial exclusion to cautious optimism.The research will draw on the methodologies of feminist art history including the reinstatement of artists erased from the literature (Nochlin 1971; Parker, Pollock 1978; Tickner 2002). International perspectives, i.e. Lucy Lippard's exploration of sculptural dematerialisation (1973) and her work on Eva Hesse (1976), will be crucial for tracing post-minimal contexts and wider influences. The impact of philosophical texts will also be considered, from the legacies of Gaston Bachelard's work (1957), to Luce Irigaray's feminist enquiry into language (1974) and Julia Kristeva's visceral treatise on abjection (1980). Although significant work had been achieved in mapping sculpture by women pre-1950 (Rose 2020), there are few accounts of subsequent practice beyond monographic assessments of 'household' names.The 'Breaking the Mould' exhibition is likely to spark considerable interest making now the moment to lead this research. This work is also timely given current efforts to decolonise art history. My prediction is that the period 1978-93 witnessed the first asserted wave of institutional decolonisation within the British art establishment. My core aim, however, is to unpick the threads that tie sculptural practice to an insistent white, male, heteronormative mode of production. I will develop a substantial counter-narrative to dislodge the discourses on British sculpture which foreground male productivity (Tucker 1977, Nairne/Serota 1981, Curtis/Wilson 2011). In loosening this stranglehold, I intend to make space for a much richer and more dynamic set of circumstances. This powerful intervention holds substantial potential to inform and promote the wider study of post-war sculpture by women.