Margaret Harrison (born 1940 in

Wakefield Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England located on the River Calder. The city had a population of 99,251 in the 2011 census.https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/ks101ew Census 2011 table KS101EW Usual resident population, ...

Yorkshire, England Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...

) is an English

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

and

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...

whose work uses a variety of media and subject matter.

Life and work

Born in Yorkshire, when her father returned from the war, her family moved first to Bridlington, then to Cumbria. Harrison studied at the Carlisle College of Art from 1957 to 1961; the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...

Schools, London, England, from 1961 to 1964; and graduated from the Perugia Fine Arts Academy, Italy, in 1965. She founded the London Women's Liberation Art Group in 1970. A 1971 exhibition of her work that was closed by the police included a piece depicting

Hugh Hefner Hugh Marston Hefner (April 9, 1926 – September 27, 2017) was an American magazine publisher. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of ''Playboy'' magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles which provoked charges of obsc ...

as a naked Bunny girl. Between 1973 and 1975 she collaborated with artists Kay Hunt and Mary Kelly to conduct a study of women's work in a metal box factory in Bermondsey, London. They presented their findings in 1975 in the installation Women and Work: A Document on the Division of Labour in Industry 1973–1975 that was first displayed at the South London Art Gallery in 1975. The exhibition told the stories of 150 working women who participated in the project and offers an account of the participants' relationship to the workplace, as well as reflections on the changes in labour and industry brought about by the Equal Pay Act (EPA), which had been passed in 1970. Her work was included in the exhibition ''Issue: Social Strategies by Women Artists'', curated by

Lucy R. Lippard Lucy Rowland Lippard (born April 14, 1937) is an American writer, art critic, activist, and curator. Lippard was among the first writers to argue for the " dematerialization" at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. ...

, at the

Institute of Contemporary Arts, London The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA c ...

in 1980. This important international group exhibition highlighted socially oriented feminist art practice and has been recognized as a key feminist exhibition. According to Chris Crickmay, Harrison’s work was amongst others coming into prominence “reflecting social concerns in that had not hitherto appeared in art galleries". Her work "Beautiful Ugly Violence" was described as "a field day of juxtapositions, as the bright and almost cheery colors of her paintings counter the often subdued and sometimes deadly topic: the various means of committing violence against women." Harrison continues to work in both the United States and England and has exhibited in America, Switzerland, and Great Britain. Her work has been shown in the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Tate Modern. She was a Senior Research Professor and Director of the Social and Environmental Art Research Centre. In 2011 "I am a Fantasy", was exhibited at the

PayneShurvell PayneShurvell is a contemporary art gallery based in William Road in Kings Cross, London. It shows the work of Andrew Curtis, Aidan McNeill, Wrik Mead, Margaret Harrison, Anka Dabrowska and other internationally-recognised artists. The policy of ...

gallery in East London from 15 April to 21 May. Beverley Knowles curated the show. In 2013, she won the Northern Art Prize In 2015, Harrison had a solo show at Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York. A retrospective of her work “Margaret Harrison: Dialogues Between Sex, Class and Violence” was held from October 2017 – January 2018 at the Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao.

References

External links

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Margaret Harrison interviewed by Francis Kavanagh for Artists Insight, April 2011
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harrison, Margaret 1940 births Living people 20th-century English women artists 21st-century English women artists Alumni of the Royal Academy Schools Alumni of the University of Cumbria Artists from Wakefield British feminist artists