Unframed: Practices and Politics of Women's Contemporary Painting

Between the twin peaks of post-modernism and post-feminism, it is now commonplace to claim that both painting and feminism are dead. Yet women's painting is undergoing a vibrant revival, and little has been written on this aspect of contemporary visual culture. Unframed asserts the importance of these debates to anyone concerned with current meanings of art and gender. The book uniquely presents new writing by practitioners who engage with theory and critical theorists who deal directly with contemporary practice. While the writers in the book all address painting in some respect, the essays also engage with performance, sculpture, installation, photography, video and digital art, refusing traditional categorisations of art by media. All contributors reflect on their own practice and that of other women painters and theorists - throughout their common aim is to develop innovative ways of thinking about and through painting by women. The book focuses on current debates about gender, subjectivity, spectatorship, the process of painting and the materiality of paint, and proposes models of painting practice that are performative rather than representational, both gendered and embodied, rejecting the canon to engage with different histories and identities. This essential book successfully moves debates on painting and gender into the new millennium. It will appeal to a range of readers including scholars, students, artists and gallery-goers.