The Showroom
Event

Celebrating The Women of Colour Index in conversation with Rita Keegan

Thursday 5 May 2016
6.30–9pm
Free, booking essential through eventbrite

Friends_woci_image

This is an evening celebrating the friends of the Women of Colour Index (WOCI), a unique collection of slides and papers relating to the emergence of Black women artists in the UK in the mid-1980s.

This collection was curated by the Black British-American artist, Rita Keegan during the 1980s-early 90s and is now in The Women's Art Library (WAL) at Goldsmiths, University of London. Thanks to an endowment from the estate of the activist feminist art historian Gillian Elinor, this collection became the focus of a WAL residency by the artist group X Marks the Spot whose work culminated in the publication Human Endeavour and a series of projections showcasing slides and artIfacts from the WOCI.

The evening is curated by Rita Keegan, inviting key figures in the making of this archive to join her in this celebration of a unique resource and its relevance to contemporary practice.

The Women's Art Library began as an artists' initiative that developed into an arts organization publishing catalogues and books as well as a magazine from the early 1980s to 2002. The main purpose however was to provide a place for women artists to deposit unique documentation of their work. Thousands of artists from around the world are represented in some form in this collection.

As part of Goldsmiths Library Special Collections, the Women's Art Library continues to collect slides, artist statements, exhibition ephemera, catalogues, and press material in addition to audio and videotapes, photographs and CD-Roms.