Women

Women film-makers dominate Jarman award shortlist for 2016

Five of the six artists competing for the 2016 Jarman award for moving image art are women, exploring subjects as diverse as Alzheimer's disease and Arab pop culture. Sophia Al Maria, Cécile B Evans, Shona Illingworth, Rachel Maclean and Heather Phillipson have been shortlisted alongside Mikhail Karikis for the £10,000 art prize, which is named after English film-maker Derek Jarman, who died in 1994.

Spirituality is a Feminist Issue

Cultivating the Occult Power and Singular Intimacy of Female Camaraderie

MIAMI - &gallery is a small space that, if crowded, requires lots of shuffling and peering over shoulders. If it is empty, a visitor could view a show in its entirety from the entrance.

So ok then

Sometimes I lift my head up out of the world I have created to survive in and I realize that I have a child. The child is like a perfect piece of pale silk and I want to protect her from every stain and smudge. I want to fold her into the world I have created to survive in and keep her there. Except then she would fade and disintegrate in my excessive care.

Some stains and smudges wash away and some do not and they become part of her unique pattern. My job is to make sure that the stains and smudges become something beautiful to her and make her fabric stronger.

Helen Reddy - I Am Woman (with lyrics)

Motherhood and Creativity 5

Today is my birthday. All weekend we celebrated by eating good food and spending time together. Now that we have our daughter, all holidays and celebrations have become a communal thing, when we remember how lucky we are to be together.

As an artist, taking a small, new human into the world is an invaluable exercise. They seem to notice every crunch of leaves, they climb up and down steps again and again with enviable concentration, they regard playgrounds with equal measures of caution and desire.

There is so much to learn from them and to be with them is to fall under an enchantment of the world that they present to us. In these strange times, I cling to that.

In these strange times art is a refuge. Not an escape but a choice of direction.

This Sick Autumn

This sick Autumn.
It won't let go of Summer.
Now the heat is like a fever.
Leaves crumple to brown in the heat.
Frost barely a memory.

Is that what she will know?
No mists and grey iron cold,
That dampens the bones but brings ghosts to the eyes?
Will fall forever be a malingerer?