Elles sont tombées

Ruth HartleyEducation, Feminism, m’Other Art4 Comments

The fall of Kabul to the Taliban has filled me with despair for the future and hopes of women there and for women everywhere. I felt driven to once again show the paintings I made about the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre together with my installation about women. It is on show in the Foyer Rural in Labatut-Riviere […]

Food is Love and Love is Food and both are needed

Ruth HartleyApartheid, m’Other Art, Southern Africa, Visual Arts3 Comments

Lovely Men and the Politics of Food One thing leads to another. I have tomato blight in my potager so I gathered all the green tomatoes I could before they turned black and then went on a hunt for a green tomato chutney recipe. My modern South African cookbook makes use of tinned products and tame store-bought spices so I […]

Beauty, culture, colonialism and the purpose of art

Ruth HartleyAesthetics, Art Process, Colonialism, Creativity, Festival, Hamera and Hartley, Installations, m’Other Art, Religion, Visual Arts3 Comments

Can standards of beauty be imposed on artists? What is beauty and is it an essential part of art? Is there such a thing as a universal standard of beauty in art? I ask because the questions are relevant to discussions about the impact of colonialism on indigenous cultures. That’s an enormous subject and there won’t be any quick or […]

The Shaping of my Art

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Apartheid, Art Process, Creativity, m’Other Art, Mpapa Gallery, Poetry, Politics, Southern Africa, Visual Arts, Zambia3 Comments

The world hasn’t stopped turning in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic, but most people’s lives have been upended. It’s been a time for self-reflection for me as well as a time of tidying up files and boxes of photos. Some photos record my changing appearance, but the more interesting ones are those that detail how my art has altered and […]