Autumn Workshop: Women Writing Art

Join us for a day of reading, writing and discussion that focuses on key female writers throughout art history. Over the past hundred years, women have approached writing on art in innovative and formally ingenious ways. And yet the work of male writers still dominates anthologies of twentieth and twenty first century Art Criticism and Art History. From Susan Sontag to Siri Hustvedt, Gertrude Stein to Anne Carson, Guerrilla Girls to the White Pube – all these women have dissolved the boundaries between poetic, creative, critical, experimental and literary approaches to writing about art. Lizzie Lloyd, writer and translator, will lead the course. Together you’ll be looking at what can be learnt from these women’s work and develop your own unique ways of writing. What makes their contribution to writing on art so vital? How do their verbal renditions of works of visual art change our perceptions of art itself? How might their influence change how we go about our writing on art? Before the session you will be asked to send in an essay, article or excerpt of writing that you really admire by a female writer (preferably on a single artwork or body of work). You will also be sent short readings two weeks prior to the event. Please read these before the workshop to aid group discussion and help develop your ideas. This class is suitable for adults with little or no previous experience. All materials will be provided. The workshop will take place at Hauser & Wirth Somerset on Saturday 20 December, 10 am – 4 pm. Tickets are £90 and include a two-course lunch at Roth Bar & Grill. – Lizzie Lloyd is a writer and translator, and lectures in Fine Art and Art / Visual Culture at the University of the West of England. Her writing is included in multiple exhibition catalogues appearing alongside shows in Exeter Phoenix, Hestercombe Gallery, UH Gallery, and Bridport Museum and she contributes to a range of magazines and journals including Art Monthly, Art Review, and artnet among many others. She was writer-in-residence at Arnolfini Gallery in 2016 and in Plymouth in 2017. Her doctoral thesis entitled ‘Art Writing and Subjectivity: Towards a Poetic Art History' was completed in 2018 at University of Bristol.