TrAIN

TrAIN Associate Project Partner

Alison Green was awarded TrAIN Associate Project (TAP) seed funding for the development of the exhibition, Carolee Schneemann and London’s Counterculture. This exhibition focuses on Schneemann’s three-year relocation from New York to London (1969-1973), as well as the large number of canonical performances, events and happenings she staged in the United Kingdom both before and after she lived here. It is a show which will introduce a general audience to an active and full moment in Schneemann’s career; to document the impact she had in the UK during these years; and to recontextualise her work in relation to interdisciplinary and media-based practices. We also anticipate relevance to public and political issues of feminism and censorship, which Schneemann’s work raised then and raises now.

The aim of Carolee Schneemann and London’s Counterculture is to be anti-monographic, and to build a picture of the larger artistic and cultural context of which Schneemann’s work was part. It presents the possibility of mapping out other figures present and active in the UK at the time, from Jean-Jacques Lebel to Susan Hiller, David Medalla to Sigi Krauss, Anthony McCall and VALIE EXPORT and Gustav Metzger to Felipe Ehrenberg, who crossed paths with Schneemann and with whom she developed important and productive relationships. The project also aims to think through Schneemann’s strategy of collaboration (essential to her practice and often occluded by the critical focus on her body) as both reflective and emblematic of the conditions of exile.

The exhibition project is being co-organised by Alison Green (London) and Kathleen Madden (New York) with the assistance of Nisha Meshvania (London). It is based on new research into both iconic and underknown works by Schneemann, archival and studio research, and interviews with the artist. The curators are currently in discussion with a major London gallery, and are developing plans for the exhibition to tour.

Alison Green is an art historian, critic and curator. She is a Senior Lecturer on the BA (Hons) Criticism, Communication and Curation at Central St Martins.

You can see Alison’s research profile here.