SAY SOMETHING
‘The world hasn’t mellowed, so why would I?’ New York-based artist Ida Applebroog–now in her 90s–tells Vogue in their February issue.
On the occasion of the exhibition, ‘Ida Applebroog. Right Up To Now 1969 – 2021’ at our Somerset gallery, we joined Polly Braden, Lauren Elkin, Hettie Judah, and moderator Lou Stoppard in conversation. Coinciding with International Women’s Day, the panel discussed Applebroog’s life and timely work, alongside her pioneering contribution to the feminist movement since the 1970s.
The exhibition features important new works created over the past year, alongside highlights travelling from the artist’s largest survey to date at Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid.
About Lou Stoppard
Lou Stoppard is a British writer and curator. She has written for The Financial Times, Aperture, The New York Times and The New Yorker. She has curated a variety of exhibitions including ‘North: Fashioning Identity’, an exploration of visual representations of the North of England, at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool and Somerset House, London; and ‘The Hoodie’, at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, which looked at this much-debated garment. Her books include a survey of the work of street photographer Shirley Baker, published by Mack in 2019, ‘Fashion Together’, an exploration of collaboration, published by Rizzoli in 2017 and ‘Pools’, an exploration of swimming in photography, published by Rizzoli in 2020.
About Polly Braden
Polly is a documentary photographer whose work features an ongoing conversation between the people she photographs and the environment in which they find themselves. Highlighting the small, often unconscious gestures of her subjects, Polly particularly enjoys long-term, in-depth collaborations that in turn lends her photographs a unique, quiet intimacy. Polly has produced a large body of work that includes not only solo exhibitions and magazine features, but most recently five books. Braden’s exhibition ‘Holding The Baby’ – a portrait of the strength and resilience of seven single parent families in the face of austerity – is on view at Arnolfini, Bristol from 19 February - 12 June 2022.
About Lauren Elkin
Lauren Elkin is the Franco-American author of ‘No. 91/92: Notes on a Parisian Commute’ (Semiotext(e)/Les Fugitives) and ‘Flâneuse: Women Walk the City’ (Chatto/FSG), which was a Radio 4 Book of the Week, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel award for the art of the essay. Her next book, ‘Art Monsters: On Beauty and Excess’ (Chatto/FSG, 2023), argues for an aesthetics of monstrosity uniting the work of feminist artists over the past century. Her writing on art has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Frieze, ArtReview, Tate Etc, and Aperture.
About Hettie Judah
Hettie Judah is a writer, broadcaster and public speaker. The senior art critic on the British daily paper The i, she is a contributor to Frieze, The Guardian, Vogue, The New York Times, Art Quarterly, Art Monthly, and ArtReview. This autumn sees the release of two new books: ‘Lapidarium’ is published by John Murray and Penguin, and explores how stones have formed human culture, and vice versa.
‘How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents)’ published by Lund Humphries, builds on her acclaimed research on the impact of parenthood on creative careers. A manifesto that she drew up with a group of artists in 2021, defending the rights of artist parents, has since been translated into 15 languages and will form the basis of an international network to be launched later this year.
