Susan Hiller in 'Women in Revolt! Art and Activism 1970 – 1990' at Tate Britain, London, UK

8 November 2023

The first exhibition of its kind, ‘Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970 – 1990’, open now at Tate Britain, is a wide-ranging exhibition of feminist art by over 100 women artists working in the UK. Shining a spotlight on how networks of women used radical ideas and rebellious methods to make an invaluable contribution to British culture, their art helped fuel the women’s liberation movement during a period of significant social, economic and political change.

As well as celebrating the work of well-known artists such as Sonia Boyce, Susan Hiller, Chila Kumari Singh Burman and Linder, Women in Revolt! platforms many women, who despite long careers, have been largely left outside the artistic narratives of the time. Shown in a major institutional exhibition for the first time are works by Poulomi Desai and Shirley Cameron among many others.

During her pregnancy in 1976–7, Susan Hiller took photographs of her body and kept a journal to record both the external and internal changes she experienced. In the resulting work on view in this show, 10 Months (1977–9), groups of photographs of her pregnant belly correspond to lunar months. The images are accompanied by journal excerpts from the same period. Arranged within a symmetrical organising structure, the starkness of the imagery and typewritten texts is in contrast to the sentimentality associated with the subject and the explicit allusions to fertility and the landscape, with the artist herself is at once a participant and an observer.

'Women in Revolt!' runs from 8 November 2023 to 7 April 2024.

Find further information via Tate.