Simone Alexander
Ravings – house ah bun down (in memory of Jean Binta Breeze) 2022
Water-based oil paint on canvas
800 x 600 mm
© Simone Alexander
Janice Cheddie argues that ‘part of understanding the work of women artists and artists of colour is understanding how interruptions shaped their practice. Although their trace in the archive may be broken – it may seem as though these artists have disappeared – they’re actually practicing in different ways, with different collaborations, continuing to work on developing the creative self’.
In conversation with Cheddie, Symrath Patti and Simone Alexander share some of their work, discussing how the themes, mediums and even the scale of their artworks have evolved and adapted over time. Reflecting on their own trajectories, they reject the concept of the oeuvre as a means of understanding and validating an artist’s work, and critique the unrealistic and gendered expectations of continuity it imposes upon artists. Instead, building on Felicity Allen’s concept of the ‘Disoeuvre’, Cheddie, Patti and Alexander ask: How do we understand ruptures and discontinuities in an artist’s practice? How have artists maintained a creative self when grappling with hostility from the art world, a lack of resources, or caring responsibilities; how have they adapted their practices to survive? How do questions of race, gender and inequality, pre-determine the work women of colour are expected to create, and how their work is considered? And how can it prevent a genuine critical engagement with their work, on their own terms?
About the Speakers
Symrath Patti was born in Kenya and came to Britain in 1967. She grew up in London and studied Fine Art at Leeds Polytechnic between 1981 and 1984. Her work explores themes of femininity and the codification of gendered bodies, embodiment, desire and purification. She explores how the personal and political emerge in dialogues of and about post-coloniality. Patti was a founding member of Panchayat, has exhibited widely and is a featured artist in the Women of Colour Index (WOCI) at the Women’s Art Library, Goldsmiths, University of London. Her wide-ranging curatorial work includes Jagrati, an exhibition featuring thirteen women artists at Citizens Gallery in Greenwich, London, in 1986. Patti curated the work of artists Mona Hatoum, Keith Piper, Chila Burman, Said Adrus, Rasheed Araeen and herself for the 1991 Havana Biennial.
Simone Alexander is a painter. She was born in London and studied at Camberwell School of Art, Byam Shaw School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art. Her exhibitions include Influences at the South London Gallery in 1998; Dorothea Tanning: Works 1942–1992 at Camden Arts Centre (1993), where she was the artist in residence; Open Futures at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham in 1988; Dislocations at Kettles Yard, Cambridge in 1988; The Image Employed at Cornerhouse, Manchester in 1987; and Unrecorded Truths at Elbow Room, London in 1986.
Dr Janice Cheddie FRSA is a London-based writer, researcher and consultant. Janice was born in St Lucia, West Indies and migrated to London as a child with her mother and older brother. She is a part of the ‘Children of Windrush’ generation, a collective generational experience that has been influential in shaping contemporary Britain. Between the mid-1990s and 2015 she was custodian of the Panchayat Collection, with the artist and curator Shaheen Merali, until its transfer to the Tate Library in 2015. Since 2015 Janice has been a member of ICOMOS-UK’s Intangible Cultural Heritage committee. Between 2020 and 2022 Janice was research consultant for London-based AFFORD, Return of the Icons initiative, funded by the Open Society Foundation. Return of the Icons seeks the restitution of looted African artefacts and human remains within UK museums and heritage institutions to their communities of origin.
