A Manton Centre book launch for Victoria Horne, editor of Counter Print: The Alternative Art Press in Britain after 1970.
The history of contemporary art is also a history of its newsletters, manifestos, magazines, pamphlets, and journals. Those periodical publications have not simply communicated or recorded ideas but have worked in exciting ways to shape art’s practices, histories and communities. Presenting a cracked mirror or counter-print to codified accounts, the alternative press emerged as a site for critical assessment, scrutiny and inspection, while forming a vibrant record of contemporary art in the making. Contributions to this book launch event will share new research about Black Phoenix, Spare Rib, Feminist Arts News, Artscribe, Bazaar, Mukti, Format Photography Agency, Urban Fox Press, Inventory, e-flux, and The White Pube.
A roundtable discussion will reflect on the history of the periodical art press and the ways we study those artefacts today. This will be chaired by Catherine Grant, who will be joined by Victoria Horne and contributors to the edited collection: Samuel Bibby, Lily Evans-Hill, Matthew Macaulay, Sonny Ruggiero, and Catherine Spencer.
Organised by Professor Steve Edwards, Manton Professor of British Art and Director of the Manton Centre for British Art, The Courtauld and Catherine Grant, Vice-Dean for Education and Reader in Modern and Contemporary Art.
With contributions from:
Victoria Horne is Assistant Professor of Arts at Northumbria University in Newcastle. In addition to editing Counter Print, her first monograph, Writing Our Own Art History: Feminist Arts News, 1989-1993, is forthcoming with Manchester University Press.
Samuel Bibby is Managing Editor of Art History. He holds a PhD from the University of Sussex and is currently completing a book project entitled Art History Works in Print: Producing Periodicals in 1970s Britain.
Lily Evans-Hill holds a doctorate in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Her research looks at visual and print cultures informed by feminism in Britain in the long 1970s and focuses on the history of the Women Artists Slide Library as both a case study and resource for this work.
Matthew Macaulay is a painter, curator and researcher based in Coventry. In 2021 he completed his doctoral study at Coventry University, examining the shifting teaching practices of a loose network of representational painters who taught in British art schools between 1975 and 2005.
Sonny Ruggiero holds a PhD in the history of art from the University of Edinburgh. Her thesis focused on the visual culture of women’s movement periodicals in the UK, specifically Spare Rib magazine.
Catherine Spencer is Senior Lecturer in the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews. Her book Beyond the Happening: Performance Art and the Politics of Communication was published by Manchester University Press in their Rethinking Art’s Histories series in 2020.