Amy Tobin, Associate Professor in the Department of History of Art and Director of Studies at Newnham, publishes two new books this autumn.
Women Artists Together: Art in the Age of Women’s Liberation offers a fresh look at the history of feminist-informed art making, focusing on the 1970s when the Women’s Liberation Movement was most active.
“Rather than tell this story through one artist, or one medium or one strand of feminism, I wanted to register the complex ways artists negotiated women’s liberation, sometimes finding great empowerment, and sometimes frustration,” Amy says. “I look at lots of different artists and practices situated in the US and the UK, emphasising the diverse ways artists confronted sexual difference.”
Published by Yale University Press, the book was supported by Newnham’s Senior Members’ Research Fund – which allowed Amy to include many previously unpublished images. A copy will be available in Newnham Library soon.
Amy has also co-edited a re-edition of the poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña’s major 1973 work Saborami, with the literary scholar Luke Roberts, published in response to Augusto Pinochet’s coup in Chile that year. “Saborami was published in a small edition in the wake of Augusto Pinochet’s coup of Salvador Allende’s social democratic government in Chile on 11 September 1973,” Amy explains. “Vicuña was living in London, where she was a student at the Slade School of Art, while these events unfolded at home.
“The book registers her desperation, anger and hope for resistance, it is also a document of her work up to that point. Unlike anything else, it is weaves together revolutionary desire, art-making and fierce resistance.”
Published by Book Works, the edition includes an introductory essay, archival materials and Vicuña’s commentary on her work. Newnham also supported the production of this book, which is available to pre-order.