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Tate Britain Talk | Film

Let's Talk About: The Erotic Self

19 March 2024 at 19.00–20.30
Photograph of the left profile of a woman sitting cross legged on a chair wearing high heeled boots

Jill Westwood Potent-Female c. 1983 © Jill Westwood

Join Women in Revolt! artists for a panel discussion on their pioneering work in exploring explicit self-imaging of women in contemporary art

Featuring Cosey Fanni Tutti and Jill Westwood, along with a filmed contribution by Caroline Coon, this event takes their diverse bodies of work as the starting point to explore the role of erotic self-representation in destabilising conventional attitudes towards gender roles and sexuality. Drawing from pornographic imagery and lived experiences of the sex industry, their work offered nuanced interrogations of power dynamics, authorship, and the commodification of pleasure.

Chaired by Reba Maybury, this panel reflects on the historical resonances of artists’ work from the 1970s and 1980s, whose use of sexually explicit imagery transgressed the boundaries of acceptability within both societal and artistic contexts.

Expect a rebellious exploration of sexuality, gender politics, pleasure, and the transformative power of art.

Cosey Fanni Tutti

Cosey Fanni Tutti is a performance artist, musician and writer. In 1969 she co-founded the art collective COUM Transmissions. Her actions, investigating the self and sexuality within the context of the sex industry, were shown in the COUM exhibition Prostitution held at the ICA in 1976, also the setting for Throbbing Gristle's inaugural live performance. After Throbbing Gristle disbanded, Tutti continued to produce and release music in her own right and under the monikers ‘Chris and Cosey’ and 'Carter Tutti' with ex-Throbbing Gristle band member Chris Carter. Her art has been exhibited in international exhibitions including Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles; Tate Modern, Le Plateau, FRAC, Paris: Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil & Dallas Contemporary Art Museum. Public collections: Tate Britain and Centre Pompidou. Her autobiography, Art Sex Music, was published in 2017 and Re-Sisters: The Lives and Recordings of Delia Derbyshire, Margery Kempe and Cosey Fanni Tutti in 2022.

Jill Westwood

Dr Jill Westwood is an artist, art psychotherapist and researcher. Westwood’s “life as art” work in the 1980s re-engineered and transformed ideas around anti-censorship imagery exploring aspects of sexuality. Her work challenged patriarchal codes by reconsidering power relations and reclaiming her own body and sexuality. Embedded within artistic and musical subcultures, Westwood was in the industrial noise-performance phenomenon - Fistfuck (1981-4). They were one of very few women-led groups in this scene. Exploring taboos, Westwood confronted personal notions of power and aggression fostering transformative processes towards deepening understanding of human struggles. Westwood continues to collaborate across a range of art practices spanning film, performance, writing, and research.

Caroline Coon

Caroline Coon is an English artist, journalist and political activist. She studied fine art at Central Saint Martin’s School of Art, where she carved out a distinctive style of hyper-realist figurative painting, made through a feminist socialist lens. She has campaigned for women’s rights since the 1960s; co-founded Release in 1967, a legal-advice agency for young people charged with the possession of drugs that continues today; and was central to London’s nascent punk scene, managing The Clash from 1978 to 1980. Inspired by feminism and the politics of sexual liberation, Coon’s paintings contest binary notions of gender and oppressive patriarchal values. Her first solo exhibition was held in 2018 at The Gallery, Liverpool.

Reba Maybury

Reba Maybury is an artist, writer, and dominatrix sometimes working under the name Mistress Rebecca. Her work explores the tension between her assumed power as an object of desire and how, through the reality of sex work and gender, she transforms that power into something experiential - men are her medium.

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19 March 2024 at 19.00–20.30

This event will include references to explicit sexual content

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