22/05/13
Margaret Harrison: On
Reflection
Payne Shurvell
17 May – 20 July 2013
They don’t make them like this any more. Margaret Harrison
(born 1940) is an old school feminist artist, perhaps less well known than her
contemporaries Mary Kelly and Nancy Spero, but with seven pieces in the Tate
collection, and currently on the shortlist for the 2013 Northern Art Prize, the
winner of which will be announced on 23 May.
Having studied at the Carlisle College of Art (1957–61), the Royal Academy Schools (1961–64),
and the Perugia Fine Arts Academy in Italy, from which she graduated in 1965,
Harrison went on to found the London Women’s Liberation Art Group in 1970.In April 1971, an exhibition of her
work, London’s first overtly one woman feminist art show, was closed by the
police on the grounds of indecency after just one day. Apparently, whilst it
was ok in the name of art to portray women in all manner of questionable poses
and situations, Harrison’s genderqueer comic book heroes, and a corseted, high
heeled, and suspender and stocking clad Hugh Hefner Bunny Boy, were
inappropriate for public display.
To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.divamag.co.uk/category/arts-entertainment/art-review-margaret-harrison’s-on-reflection.aspx