Viva Lewes Issue #157 October 2019

ART: BOOK
Voyaging Out
So many lives…
Sylvia Pankhurst,
daughter of Emmeline,
was a political activist
and campaigner for
women’s rights. She was
also an artist. ‘Her art’,
writes Carolyn Trant
in her new Thames &
Hudson book, Voyaging
Out, ‘became her way of
bearing witness, showing the monotony of the
repetitive work done by women, from packing
fish to stooking corn; enduring the heat of the
mills or cold in the fields.’
The book’s packed with fascinating life stories
of British women artists over the last 150 years:
how they did and didn’t manage to work, how
they organised their lives, who they lived with,
who they worked with; and how that work was
then received – or not – by the establishment of
the day.
The effect of this “narrative non-fiction” is
compelling, and cumulative: all these lives
lived, and lost – and the extraordinary art that
emerged. The pictures dotted throughout are
an education. And Carolyn is herself, of course,
an artist, not historian: the emphasis stays firmly
with the work.
The idea for the book came, Carolyn tells me
when I visit her in Lewes, after she wrote and
published her 2004 life of Peggy Angus. Peggy,
born to a mining family, one of 13 children, was
always an outsider when it came to the art establishment,
and deliberately so. “She was being
an outsider definitively, so she could say what
she thought”, says Carolyn. “This could seem
intimidating, but she was totally fearless.”
Carolyn knew Peggy well – from the age of
11, when Peggy was her art
teacher at her school in North
London. They remained
close until Peggy’s death in
2004. “And there were so
many other women artists
I encountered through her.
I wanted to write about her
wider group of friends. That
was the seed. This book grew
from there. At one stage it was three times the
size! And of course it was a joy writing it because
I know a lot of the next generation: they’ve been
so generous.”
She was also politically motivated. “I’d been
part of a group called Women In Print. Of
course, I’ve cared about how women have been
overlooked for simply being women. And the
relevance today is important. We’re at a period
where we’re rethinking what art is. Grayson
Perry – who I think is brilliant – is Peggy Angus
today. It’s to do with looking at art as something
you do as part of life – nothing to do with galleries
etc.”
Throughout this account, of course, women
juggle their art with other roles and constraints:
financial, class, marriage, security, children, the
kitchen sink. Their courage and determination
shine through these potted histories. And
Carolyn also thinks that, politically and socially,
we have things to (re)learn. “Now is so like the
1930s – with the rise of fascism. These women
were so inspiring, had such integrity.
“Perhaps they didn’t have so much to lose”, she
says. “But they lived by their beliefs, and they
stood up for things. Today, we could do with
remembering this.”
Charlotte Gann
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