Alexandra Arts are excited to announce that Wigan art star Anna FC Smith has been commissioned to contribute to this year’s Pankhurst in the Park project. Anna will be running workshops locally throughout April and May, centring around eggs, protest, carnival, and the Women’s Suffrage Movement. In July, a new body of work drawing from these themes and the contributions of participants will be presented in West Chelsea, New York premier art district.
The significance of eggs is grounded in the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Smith draws from an often-overlooked method of protest by these groups – the pelting of eggs and flour on public officials and buildings. Egg throwing, Smith argues, has long been a form of carnivalesque transgression. As well as a symbol of sabotage and mayhem, eggs also evoke fertility, new life, the domestic and the everyday.
Alexandra Arts and Anna FC Smith invite you to mark the historic achievements of the Suffrage Movement on this significant anniversary by reflecting on the methods of protest used by these activists, to have fun and ‘turn the world upside down’. Join us in Manley Park on May 7th, at Whalley Range’s very own Celebrate Festival, between noon and 6pm. Anna ‘s research led commission includes sessions with Alexandra Arts partners and park stakeholders.
In light of the centenary of women’s suffrage and Alexandra Arts transatlantic exchange with NYC based Art 511 Mag, Anna was commissioned to write a piece titled ‘The ritualistic heritage of the suffragettes’ - this was initiated by the Pankhurst in the Park Programme, whose community locus is the same Alexandra Park where many of the suffragettes’s organising and protesting took hold. Adjacent infamous suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst’s residence.
Alexandra Arts Pankhurst in the Park Programme champions women’s continuous creativity, radical acts of rebellion and inversion of the status quo through their organisational support of the socially engaged work of contemporary female artists working within and around the park.
Read and download Anna’s piece here
