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FOUR CORNERS BOOKS
See Red Women's Workshop
Feminist Posters 1974–1990
Foreword by Sheila Rowbotham. Text by Prudence Stevenson, Susan Mackie, Anne Robinson, Jess Baines.
"Girls are powerful": the ‘70s feminist posters of See Red Women’s Workshop
A feminist silkscreen poster collective founded in London in 1974 by three former art students, the See Red Women’s Workshop grew out of a shared desire to combat sexist images of women and to create positive and challenging alternatives. Women from different backgrounds came together to make posters and calendars that tackled issues of sexuality, identity and oppression. With humor and bold, colorful graphics, See Red expressed the personal experiences of women as well as their role in wider struggles for change.
Written by See Red members, detailing the group’s history up until the closure of the workshop in 1990, and with a foreword by celebrated feminist historian Sheila Rowbotham, See Red Women’s Workshop features all of the collective’s original screenprints and posters. Confronting negative stereotypes, questioning the role of women in society, and promoting women’s self-determination, the power and energy of these images reflect an important and dynamic era of women’s liberation—with continued relevance for today.
Featured image is reproduced from 'See Red Women's Workshop.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
It's Nice That
Bryony Stone
…the messages shouted by the members of See Red continue to be relevant.
Vogue
Rebecca Bengal
The legacy these posters leave behind is arresting, urgent, and inspiring for all who march in their wake.
JUXTAPOZ
Confronting negative stereotypes, questioning the role of women in society, and promoting women’s self-determination, the power and energy of these images reflect an important and dynamic era of women’s liberation — and have continued relevance for today.
Buzzfeed
The posters still seem able to speak to different generations, although it indicates, as if we were in any doubt, that the struggle for women’s freedom and equality is far from won.
Metropolis
Hinali Shah And Merilyn Chang
See Red Women’s Workshop chronicles the struggles, humor, and successes of young women trying to make a change in their society.
Publishers Weekly
Mark Dery
Undeniably effective.
STATUS: Out of stock
Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.
Today we celebrate International Women's Day with this poster from the March 8, 1975, protest march in London. It hails from our evergreen collection of radical feminist posters from the See Red Women's Workshop (active in the UK from 1974–1990). This poster was, in fact, the collective's first commission. Five thousand of these offset litho prints were wheat-pasted around London in advance of the march 47 years ago today. See the best of the rest in See Red! continue to blog
This 1979 "Girls Are Powerful!" poster is reproduced from See Red Women's Workshop: Feminist Posters 1974–1990, the 2017 best-seller from Four Corners Books in the U.K. One our Staff Favorite Holiday Gift Books of the year, this super-dynamic volume collects more than 100 silkscreen posters by the London feminist collective that tackled issues of sexuality, identity and oppression with humor and bold, colorful graphics. At the time this poster was printed, it was still unusual for girls to play sports at local youth clubs, though it was produced the year Margaret Thatcher took office. Now, more than ever, we salute the women who brought the Feminist movement to the forefront of the international conversation in the 1970s, and we include the women who are carrying the torch today. With the #MeToo movement in full swing and last night's defeat of Roy Moore in Alabama, we cannot recommend this book highly enough. Find it at your local independent bookstore! continue to blog
The feminist posters of the 1970s See Red Women's Workshop "hint at the great hopes that were aroused and sustained through sisterhood and through solidarities of race and class," Sheila Rowbotham writes in this timely compendium of radical British feminist posters from 1974 through 1990. "These were forceful enough to encourage many young women and men to bite the hand that fed them. Our subversive refusal was a profound recoil from a system based on inequality and a culture that confined self-expression and development to an elite. Much was to be crushed amidst a multitude of defeats. However, as a radical historian I have spent a lifetime chasing memories that appear to vanish below the surface, only to resurface in the most surprising ways. I sincerely hope that new hands will pick up these posters, bear them aloft and act upon them. For there is indeed a great deal that needs to be done." Recommended reading for this inaugural weekend. continue to blog
Printed in 1978, the silkscreen poster "Don't Let Racism Divide Us" is reproduced from See Red Women's Workshop, Four Corners Books' new compendium of the London feminist collective's posters, 1974–1990. "Ambitiously, See Red were not about selling a product or even getting over a party political message," British socialist feminist theorist Sheila Rowbotham writes in her foreword, "they were up to something far more complex and far more difficult. They aimed to convey ideas about a transformed society in which relations of gender, race and class would no longer be marked by inequality and subordination. Those messages, on the posters, ‘So long as women are not free, the people are not free’ and ‘Lesbians are everywhere’ contested the prevailing ‘common sense.’ See Red aimed to be clear and wanted to reorient perspectives. Making those posters appear so simple and self-evident must have been agonizingly hard to accomplish. It is not actually that difficult to perplex with layer upon layer of words; to clarify abstraction with just a few constitutes a rare skill." continue to blog
Join us February 16-18 in Booth 802-804 at the 2017 College Art Association Annual Conference! Browse key course adoption titles, new and classic monographs, influential surveys and exhibition catalogs and artists' writings. continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 8.75 x 12.25 in. / 184 pgs / 90 color / 25 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $39.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $53.95 ISBN: 9781909829077 PUBLISHER: Four Corners Books AVAILABLE: 2/28/2017 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: Out of stock TERRITORY: NA ME
See Red Women's Workshop Feminist Posters 1974–1990
Published by Four Corners Books. Foreword by Sheila Rowbotham. Text by Prudence Stevenson, Susan Mackie, Anne Robinson, Jess Baines.
"Girls are powerful": the ‘70s feminist posters of See Red Women’s Workshop
A feminist silkscreen poster collective founded in London in 1974 by three former art students, the See Red Women’s Workshop grew out of a shared desire to combat sexist images of women and to create positive and challenging alternatives. Women from different backgrounds came together to make posters and calendars that tackled issues of sexuality, identity and oppression. With humor and bold, colorful graphics, See Red expressed the personal experiences of women as well as their role in wider struggles for change.
Written by See Red members, detailing the group’s history up until the closure of the workshop in 1990, and with a foreword by celebrated feminist historian Sheila Rowbotham, See Red Women’s Workshop features all of the collective’s original screenprints and posters. Confronting negative stereotypes, questioning the role of women in society, and promoting women’s self-determination, the power and energy of these images reflect an important and dynamic era of women’s liberation—with continued relevance for today.
