7 March 2025 brought with it not only a burst of spring weather but also the long anticipated Women in Revolt! exhibition, a collection of over 90 women artists that showcases Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990. As an era of significant political and social change, the art and culture created at the time was a fuel for the women’s liberation movement. Inspired by the domestic, sexuality, anger, loss, violence, and racism, this landmark collection brings together a variety of practices, capturing female voices over two decades.
Art has been a vessel of activism for centuries. The late 20th century was no different. As Thatcher reigned and the miners strikes powered on, women marched for equal pay, sang against capitalism, and used experimentation to subvert the mainstream, rejecting conservatism and revolting against outdated standards.
As you enter The Whitworth’s Women in Revolt! show, you are welcomed by a huge floor to ceiling wall dotted with badges hosting slogans such as “it begins while you sink in his arms and ends with your arms in his sink” and “don’t sit on the fence pull it down!”.
The tone is set instantly; there seems to be tension between the decades, between the then and now. The collection is built upon injustice, and you can feel it. I feel uncomfortable initially and then instantly guilty. Uncomfortable because everything around me is so deeply connected with how I feel. Guilty because we are still fighting the battles of our mothers, our grandmothers. I am not doing enough.
I am faced with flickering TV screens flanked by framed photographs of angered faces, a sea of fury in the form of a protest. What the exhibition does exceptionally well is set a scene. Chronologically curated, the collection begins with the 1970s and walks the visitors through the next two decades with leaflets, sculpture, installation, and video. I am a sucker for an exhibition with real artefacts and memorabilia.
But there is one piece that follows you into each room, clings to your nerves and intensifies the experience wholly. This is Gina Burch’s ‘3 Minute Scream’, a Super 8 video installation from 1977 so impossible to ignore it becomes the piece that everything else revolves around. Her face fills the projection, her voice fills the exhibition. This piece confronts you no matter where you go, echoey, eerily, and causing little girls to shove their fingers into their ears. It is a grating sound, admittingly, but one I force myself to hear because that is what it was made for.
As the defiant scream reigns on, the intersectionality of racism and sexism is explored through poignant works by Black and southeast Asian female artists whose work refuses any one idea of what sexism is to be defined.
Zarina Bhimji’s In Response to the F-Stops Exhibition (1986) is a series of copper toned photographs accompanied by printed text that explores the unacknowledged absence of black women in white feminist discourses. The work is soft, strong and tonally wonderful and urges for a dialogue between white feminists and their black sisters.
The variety of tales, perspectives, and artistic practices on display at Women in Revolt! makes for a dynamic experience that just fizzes with history and the spirit of punk. It is vital that younger generations are exposed to the work encased in this exhibition for its timeliness and relevancy is still as prevalent as the day the works were made. We must still push, revolt, and use art to be active in protest, continuing to stay agitated and fierce.
As I take my time at each installation, I find comfort in noticing the many older women who have brought along young girls, children who are hooked by the huge installations like Greenham Common by Margaret Harrison or entranced by the old performance art shown on small tv screens, big headphones perched on small heads. I hope they remember something of what they have seen today, or at least the way it made them feel.
There are hundreds of thousands more words I could write about such a vital and important collection of works but I feel all I can leave you with is my imploring tone to visit for yourself, read all they give you to read, and take time at all they give you to see.
Women in Revolt! is a completely free exhibition, running until the 1 June 2025.
