Women In Revolt: the thrill of women's rage

Suzanne Moore wrote ten years about that women’s rage is “totally thrilling”. And she was right.

I saw the Women In Revolt exhibition at Tate Britain last week and I was totally thrilled.

It’s subtitled ‘Art, Activism and the Women’s movement in the UK 1970–1990’ and it’s a reminder of the power of women speaking the truth. On many different subjects – our roles, our bodies, our work, our pay, our society. And through many different media – photography, performance, painting, music and more.

The first section, Rising With Fury, starts the story with the 1970 National Women's Liberation Conference. My friend and I (we’d gone together, without our husbands) were struck by how normal the women in the photos looked. It’s how we remember our peers when we were growing up: with real, flawed, individual faces. 

This took us nicely onto the next item, Jo Spence’s Beyond The Family Album. Forty-five years later, her concept of an alternative to the perfect public image makes even more sense. And it made me wonder how far we’d actually come since the 1970s. It wasn’t the first time I’d have that thought as we went through the galleries.

Even in the first room, things feel like punk already with subversive messages conveyed through DIY techniques of collage, posters, fanzines and badges. 

And there is actually a punk room: section 3 (of six; it’s a big show) is titled ‘Oh Bondage! Up Yours!’ It’s got Gina Birch screaming on a huge video, Poly Styrene’s Germ Free Adolescents collage, Cosey Fanni Tutti taking her clothes off, and a video of Linder’s meat-dress performance at the Hacienda.  

“My tribe!” I said to my friend. But my tribe were all round me. Nearly everyone there was female, and most of them had grey hair. I wanted to hug them all and say “Sisters!” We exchange wry smiles instead.

The final room was called ‘There’s no such thing as society’ and anyone of a certain age will remember where that came from, and what we were fighting against. And will know that there are fights that need to be fought again.

The exhibition stopped there, but I wished it hadn’t. I wanted to know what happened next, and what is happening now and why I haven’t heard about it.

Then when I got home I went on Facebook and I saw this: an artist, Deborah Wood, using her old-woman invisibility cloak to spread subversive street art. She says: “Joy and rage are both necessary tools to counter the effects of ageism twinned with sexism.”

In the same thread, I read about Older Women Rock, an art project where women in their 60s and 70s can find their voices.

An item from that reminded me about the Profanity Embroidery Group. 

Then I remembered Ruth Miller’s Unglamorous music project, encouraging women who’d never played before to start bands. I cried when I got their sampler album earlier this year, because I was so happy for them. 

And I realised that it’s still happening. Women are still raging. They’re still giving voice to that rage. There’s art in that. And it’s still thrilling.

P.S. The Suzanne Moore quote comes from an article in the New Statesman, which I remembered because she mentions it in her Substack this week. (You need to register for the first and pay for the second, but if you’ve got no money the preview is pretty good too.)