ABSTRACT

This important new book examines contemporary art while foregrounding the key role feminism has played in enabling current modes of artmaking, spectatorship and theoretical discourse.

Contemporary Art and Feminism carefully outlines the links between feminist theory and practice of the past four decades of contemporary art and offers a radical re-reading of the contemporary movement. Rather than focus on filling in the gaps of accepted histories by ‘adding’ the ‘missing’ female, queer, First Nations and women artists of colour, the authors seek to revise broader understandings of contemporary practice by providing case studies contextualised in a robust art historical and theoretical basis. Readers are encouraged to see where art ideas come from and evaluate past and present art strategies. What strategies, materials or tropes are less relevant in today’s networked, event-driven art economies? What strategies and themes should we keep hold of, or develop in new ways?

This is a significant and innovative intervention that is ideal for students in courses on contemporary art within fine arts, visual studies, history of art, gender studies and queer studies.

chapter |12 pages

Introduction

chapter 2|36 pages

Beyond performing identities

chapter 3|44 pages

Feminism and the pedagogical turn in art

chapter 4|39 pages

Craftivism

A material ethics of care

chapter 5|36 pages

Avant gardening

Western landscape, ecofeminism and First Nations’ care for country

chapter 6|33 pages

Feminist worlds

Re-imagining community and publics

chapter 7|11 pages

Conclusion

Feminist arts activism—doing politics differently