An Art and Life Class: Convening Critical Women to Resist Art Schooling

An analogue slide show presentation and talk by Adele Patrick, co-founder of both Women in Profile (WiP) and Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL).

In the mid 1980’s a group of women studying at Glasgow School of Art began to meet in each other’s flats with slides of their work and a projector for ‘Slide Criticism’ sessions. Responding to the prevailing art institutional pedagogy that erased women’s lives and contributions to art and history formation, these informal, packed, self-organised and facilitated meetings were a counter cultural locus informed by consciousness raising to discuss women’s art, women artists and feminism. They were a precursor to the founding of Women in Profile (WiP) and subsequently Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL).

Adele Patrick, who was a 'Slide Criticism' meeting host, will show slides from the original meetings (now held in the GWL collection), discuss their rationale, their legacy and the pre-digital technologies involved.

This workshop forms part of the free curriculum of events for

Event is free and open to all to attend.

Adele Patrick has been developing innovative cultural projects rooted in equalities and in academic research and community learning and teaching for over 30 years. She co-founded Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL) in 1991 and is currently a Co-Director. Trained as a designer at Glasgow School of Art (where she subsequently taught Gender, Art and Culture) Adele has worked collaboratively with writers, visual artists, filmmakers and performers throughout her career, most recently Reiko Goto Collins and Yoko Ono for Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art 2024. She has published widely in academic, professional and popular journals and regularly speaks at national and international conferences.
Following a Clore Leadership Fellowship in 2018/2019, Adele undertook Post Fellowship research on Feminist Leadership in the cultural realm, a field she is continuing to explore with a range of international colleagues and organisations in her capacity as a coach, mentor, consultant and advisor to academic researchers. Some of her findings are accessible here. In 2022 she joined the Board of the V&A Dundee and in 2023 was awarded the Fletcher of Saltoun Award from the Saltire Society.

Outside the Circle, is an exhibition and event programme inspired by and generated from feminist and queer movements since the beginning of the 20th century that foregrounds intersectional feminist and queer strategies of radical emancipation, resistance, survival, and collective action as critical and pedagogical ‘ruptures’ in our lived experience. It is the fourth iteration of ongoing programme, .

Host or Publisher Cooper Gallery