Womens Day: Creative community litany

This year for International Women’s Day, we invited women in Liverpool to take part in a piece of mass participation performance art that paid homage to the work of Hannah O’Shea (b.1939), having been alerted to her work at Tate Britain's current exhibition, ‘WOMEN IN REVOLT!! ART AND ACTIVISM IN THE UK 1970-1990.

The group that gathered to co-create ‘The Independent Guide To Liverpool’s Women Creatives’ ()invited you to take part in a piece of mass participation performance art that paid homage to the works of Hannah Oshea, (‘Stills from a Visual Time Span’, and ‘A Litany For Women Artists’ 1977).

What we hoped to achieve was a powerful performance piece that encapsulated the essence of O’Shea's work with our own take on it. We created a live film of the group standing in our collective power, dressed in black and white dazzle print, singing the names of all the women who wished to be represented as Liverpool Women Creatives.

Rachel Waite from Holistic Harmonies had created the framework for how we would sing our names during the performance which she taught on the night, but to get a head start she had lovingly created these audio clips and teaching videos below if you’d like to check it out in advance.

O’Shea was a performance artist, filmmaker, and founding member of the Women’s Artist Collective, and had had stills of her work featured on the cover of the iconic ‘Spare Rib’ magazine which shaped debate about feminism in the UK from 1972-1993. There were two pieces our ‘happening’ referenced. The first being ‘Stills from a Visual Time Span’ which were photographs documenting a performance confronting fear of women’s power where O’Shea painted the performer's body with optical effects comparable to animal markings.

The second was a piece called ‘A Litany For Women Artists’ where O’Shea chanted the names of 600 women artists to ‘emphasize the ignorance and historical denial of their contributions as creative instigators’ You can watch the video created & see images from the night here https://liverpoolwomencreatives.my.canva.site/litany