When I came to London it was to study at Saint Martins School of Art
because I had heard that this is where conceptualism was happening
and the very next day, I think after I arrived
there was the largest demonstration ever against the war in this country
The streets were filled
The art schools were occupied
and just hot on the heels of that was the beginning of the women’s movement
Everything was changing at the same time
We were trying to change our personal lives
First of all we started trying to live collectively
We thought different forms of family were possible
There were different ways of taking care of children
You know, women weren’t taken seriously, you have to remember that
There were no women in Government
There were no women in teaching
I was the first woman to have an artist’s residency at Cambridge
I was the first woman to teach a course on Women in Art in Camberwell
Everything seemed to be a first
One of the things that Post-Partum Document is about is the complex psychology of the mother/child relationship
and how that underpins something like the social sexual division of labour
It was about subjectivity but it was very critically engaged with subjectivity
It would be something where you would pull the spectator in to this diegetic space, really
a very intimate space of reading where this narrative unfolds
The point about the woman and her relation to the child is of course of central and was unique
and I couldn’t figure out why no-one had dealt with this
and that there’s nothing but saccharin images of woman and children in art historically speaking
A process like the lint which I developed at home doing something like washing
and you’d hear the news on the television, and you’d be thinking about that while you were working
and when I saw the material I thought that it just had the ephemeral quality that was necessary
to try to tackle that problem visually
How to represent war related atrocities that had to do with women and children in a work of art
It was seeing that things in the media filter through into our everyday lives
like we’re not separate from the traumatic effects of that
Exchanges with graduate students around their interest in the period of ‘68...
was important for me in doing the piece called Love Songs that was in Documenta 12
and I only went back to look at that initially because
the generation born at that time were asking me about it
It’s not just the events that took place
but it’s what was thought
and why does anything that’s passed on and how perhaps something like feminism
informed by psychoanalysis has completely changed in the ways that it’s been used
You can see the relations between men and women are very different of a younger generation
and that men are very involved, often without credit, in childcare
There’s certainly much greater expectation for women
Now you can’t say everywhere though
But for someone who’s been in teaching for 40 years
women are much, much better placed to fulfil their potential
and that gives me hope