Revealing Work. Interrogating Artifacts to (Re)View Histories of Feminist Architectural Practice

Contemporary representations of feminist practices in architecture that took place in the near past rely upon scant and therefore precious photographs and images. Many unique physical artefacts are lying, unarchived, in box files and plan chests or fading on bookshelves, and their meanings and associations remain caught in the era in which they were made. We have selected artefacts derived from thirty years of feminist spatial practice in London that we, with others, were instrumental in creating, to re-examine, and to invite further commentaries. We contextualise them in their period, and, through their interrogation, propose possible interpretations. We ask how physical engagement with things can generate insights that help to both capture and better understand aspects of the history of feminist architectural practices.

This investigation is particularly concerned to reappraise what counts as work; the work of actual doing; the work of finding ways to generate social change; the experiences of that work as embodied; and the work that the artefact itself does - how, through what happens to it in the world, it exceeds or alters what had been intended.