more mental health drawings

Reclaim the Night

Will actually write things here later but for now here's a picture of our amazing banner from Reclaim the Night yesterday.

More FemLib / Reclaim the Night things

Banner progress from tonights meeting

(any excuse to get the glitter out)

Project:BABE 'Becoming' Exhibition

I'm submitting some work to project:BABE's 'Becoming' exhibition really soon and they asked me to do the launch poster for it too, here's the first version!

More Reclaim the Night things

I helped to organise a placard making workshop for Reclaim the Night with the beginnings of an MMU Feminist society yesterday. Here are some photos that Hebe took of things we came up with! 

We've started making a huge banner as well which should look marvellous. We also talked about creating a writing wall in the union where people could add their thoughts / experiences of sexual harassment and related issues.

More Mental Healths

Mental Healths

Trying to draw some of my experiences with mental illness for an exhibition (that I'll go into more in another post!). This is the first of at least a couple more that I might eventually combine into one image, who knows.

Reclaim the Night Placards

I went to a banner/placard making workshop for Reclaim the Night tonight and now I feel super motivated / inspired / all that good stuff. I ended up making loads and getting super carried away, I'm going to make some more tomorrow with women from MMU as well.

one of my placards

Reclaim the Night  is a women-led march pushing for justice for rape survivors and denouncing all types of sexual violence and street harassment. I went to the 2012 Reclaim the Night which was really good but I'm trying to become more actively involved in it this year because it's a cause I feel incredibly passionate about.

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Cristy C. Road and News From Nowhere

Yesterday I got the urge to just jump on a train and land somewhere that wasn't Manchester so I spent an afternoon wandering the streets of Liverpool.

After a few hours wandering I discovered News from Nowhere, a radical, workers co-operative bookshop at the top of Bold Street. They stocked books on a huge range of interesting and important topics from political to personal and back again. I really wish there was somewhere like this in Manchester!

I was super excited to see that they also stocked a large amount of zines on a wide variety of different topics. Most of exciting of all though, was the selection of awesome graphic novels that you probably wouldn't find in most other comic book shops. Amongst the graphic novels I found Spit and Passion by Cristy C. Road. I'd come across Road's work before but had never read any of her books.

Spit and Passion covers Road's early teen years growing up as a working class, Cuban, queer girl raised by her Catholic family in Florida in the early nineties. Her art isn't something I would usually be drawn to but after a few pages I was totally sucked in by it. It suited her story perfectly and I now absolutely love it. It also seemed like more of an illustrated memoir than a graphic novel  but it worked incredibly well. 

It was a really awesome read and made me feel both angry (in a good way!) and inspired. In short this book gave me all the feels.

I also bought Twigs and Apples #6 which I'm really looking forward to reading, it has such a gorgeous cover! I might do a post about some of my favourite zines soon, who knows.

Twigs and Apples 6

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Taboo Exhibition

After the Manchester Art Gallery Zine Fair I decided to investigate the Taboo exhibition being held at 2022NQ by other Interactive Arts students. The premise of the exhibition was to explore the notions of 'taboo' within our culture and the pieces covered a diverse range of topics including  sexuality, mental health, feminism and dreams.

piece in centre by Saffina Bhatti

Although I missed some of the more performance based pieces by being at the Zine Fair, I thought they still retained their intrigue after their initial display and were interesting just as abandoned objects or displays. My favourite pieces were the two sculptural works, coincidentally both dealing with issues of feminism, by Saffina Bhatti and Emily Rusby respectively, and the illustrated narrative by Nat Dunning.

by Emily Rusby

There was also a mostly architectural illustration exhibition being held in the room next door which I really enjoyed. They were taken from practitioners from a variety of disciplines and were mostly by graduates from a number of different universities. My favourite piece on display in this room was the comic by Zac Gorman which had a gorgeous use of colour.

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Manchester Art Gallery Zine Fair

As part of their Thursday Lates season, the Manchester Art Gallery recently hosted a Zine Fair presenting work by a variety of different Manchester based artists and groups.

There was a good amount of people selling their art in a fairly diverse range of styles and it was great to see such a huge turnout. It's also exciting to see zines continue to rise in popularity and visibility and starting to become embraced by such prominent authorities as major galleries.

I ended up spending over my budget but I regret nothing! My favourite stalls were Project:BABE, John Allison, Joe List, Sugar Paper Zine, Young Explorer Zine amongst very many more. Here is a rubbish photo of some of the marvellous zines and comics and things that I bought.

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