Art Labor, Sex Politics: Feminist Effects in 1970s British Art and Performance

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Contrary to critics who have called it the “undecade,” the 1970s were a time of risky, innovative art—and nowhere more so than in Britain, where the forces of feminism and labor politics merged in a radical new aesthetic. InArt Labor, Sex PoliticsSiona Wilson investigates the charged relationship of sex and labor politics as it played out in the making of feminist art in 1970s Britain. Her sustained exploration of works of experimental film, installation, performance, and photography maps the intersection of feminist and leftist projects in the artistic practices of this heady period. Collective practice, grassroots activism, and iconoclastic challenges to society’s sexual norms are all fundamental elements of this theoretically informed history. The book provides fresh assessments of key feminist figures and introduces readers to less widely known artists such as Jo Spence and controversial groups like COUM Transmissions. Wilson’s interpretations of two of the best-known (and infamous) exhibitions of feminist art—Mary Kelly’sPost-Partum Documentand COUM Transmissions’Prostitution—supply a historical context that reveals these works anew. Together these analyses demonstrate that feminist attention to sexual difference, sex, and psychic formation reconfigures received categories of labor and politics. How—and how much—do sexual politics transform our approach to aesthetic debates? What effect do the tropes of sexual difference and labor have on the very conception of the political within cultural practice? These are the questions that animateArt Labor, Sex Politicsas it illuminates an intense and influential decade of intellectual and artistic experimentation. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 10 Introduction: Sex Politics......Page 12 1 Nightcleaners: The Ambiguities of Activism and the Limits of Production......Page 32 2 The Spectator as Reproducer: Mary Kelly’s Early Films......Page 84 3 Prostitution and the Problem of Feminist Art: The Emergent Queer Aesthetic of COUM Transmissions......Page 124 4 Revolting Photographs: Proletarian Amateurism in Jo Spence and Terry Dennett’s Photography Workshop......Page 170 Acknowledgments......Page 232 Notes......Page 234 Bibliography......Page 272 A......Page 298 B......Page 299 C......Page 300 D......Page 302 F......Page 303 G......Page 304 H......Page 305 J......Page 306 L......Page 307 M......Page 308 N......Page 310 P......Page 311 R......Page 313 S......Page 314 T......Page 316 U......Page 317 W......Page 318 Z......Page 319