Liz Murray

Despite greater societal awareness of sexual inequalities, women are still more likely than men to experience workplace and salary inequity, sexual harassment, and be victims of male violence.  As such, many of the primary goals of second-wave feminism remain largely unrealised. This practice-led research proposes an act of protest for reconsideration within this context, one of feminist, all-female and queer resistance. It nominates the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (1981-2000) its actions, bodies, archives, stories, site and materials – as an expansive and expanding artwork.

My own experience as a ‘Greenham Woman’ informs the research. I use my archive of materials to direct processes both in the studio and through writing. I argue the case for nomination of the protest as artwork through three trajectories: the artwork as Gift, as Binder, and as Correspondence. In the latter, I employ letter-writing in the present day to my past self as a method to interrogate and correspond with memory and objects that trace the history of the protest. 

The project does not claim authority or ownership over this singular protest, but instead nominates as a means to incite a call to action that demands a reconsideration of feminist practices and values then and now. In doing so, it asks what are the limits of art to enable a productive revaluation of gender equality and how might this enable generative forms of response? What gets dislodged when the relations between politics, life, and art are blurred and what are the effects of this displacement?