Mary Wollstonecraft naked A statue to honour Mary Wollstonecraft, created by Maggi Hambling and commissioned by Mary on the Green, has been erected at Newington Green. It depicts a small, stern-faced, naked female figure with a bush of hair on her pubic mound rising out of swirling silver shapes and it has caused a great deal of outrage and criticism […]
Lines in the sand erased in the sea of history
‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man’ There was a regular history exam question at my school that asked students to debate whether ‘the hour made the man or the man made the hour’. It usually related to a period of history that we had just finished studying. For example – did Britain’s survival in WW2 depend solely on Winston Churchill’s […]
Truth and storytelling, minds, hearts and history
There are those moments when something you read strikes you so forcibly that you know you must embrace it and consider it carefully. When this happens to me it’s usually for an important reason. It may throw a clear light on something that’s happening in my life or in life in general that I need to grasp intellectually. It may […]
Art, beauty, colonialism and Mpapa Gallery
Discussion about art and beauty – and art and colonisation – is challenging. My past connection with Zambia and Mpapa Gallery, and my present connection with post-colonialism and my own art are about how I live my life. It has been said that Mpapa Gallery was colonial in its support for artists. Mpapa Gallery wasn’t and couldn’t be colonial for […]
Inspiration, sharing, genius and intellectual property
Heroes and Scapegoats As you can probably tell I’m unimpressed by the idea of male genius in art and male heroes in political history, when its written by men. It’s a useful trick to focus on a key individual in an epoch when there’s an exam looming but it leaves women out and falsifies history. it also allows people to […]