Main Gallery
Monica Ross: Unquiet Woman
- 19 July – 31 August 2025
- Wednesday - Sunday 12:00 - 17:00
ABOUT
Across two of our galleries at Phoenix Art Space, we are exploring the work and lasting legacy of pioneering feminist artist Monica Ross in collaboration with the Monica Ross Archive. This exploration unfolds through the exhibition Unquiet Woman, referencing her performance given at the Living Room at Bridge Studios, Birmingham in 1984, and interwoven public engagements entitled history or not, taken from her 2000 paper of the same name.
The selection of artworks in the Main and Rear Gallery from the extensive archive represent key moments in Monica’s career. They are gathered around three critically interlinked themes in her work: exposing and opposing structures of power, for example through the work made at and about Greenham Common (1982-84); the conditions and constraints of the working class woman, and women artists – such as the works that form Arrival/Triple Transformations (1985) made in collaboration with Shirley Cameron and Evelyn Silver, and history or not (2000) from her paper: history or not, delivered at 347 minutes, a conference held in conjunction with the Whitechapel Art Gallery exhibition Live in Your Head (2000).
The overarching title of this project resonates at different frequencies in relation to her work. It directly references Unquiet Woman, a work that addresses femicide and violence against women. More broadly, the work critiques the role of the media in sensationalising events of violence against vulnerable people, thereby demeaning and dehumanising them in the process. The third theme in the exhibition explores her abiding commitment to human rights as an ongoing process of individual and collective endeavour, exemplified by Anniversary—an act of memory, her seminal final work, first performed in 2008. In response to the police shooting of innocent civilian Jean Charles de Menezes in London in 2005, Ross began this series of performances reciting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from memory. Rightsrepeated (2005-2008) evolved into Anniversary—an act of memory (2008-2013), a series of 60 solo and collective recitations from memory in many languages, performed at sites including the British Library and the House of Commons, and on dates to coincide with other anniversaries, such as International Women’s Day and the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester. It continues to be performed around the world and is especially relevant today. A series of recitations will take place throughout the exhibition’s duration.
If history is cyclical, then we have wound our way back to (or never truly left behind) the conditions that inspired much of her work – misogyny, demonisation of minorities, global wars and genocides, ongoing climate emergencies and the re-proliferation of nuclear power and threats.
Monica was a studio member at Phoenix Art Space, and her archive was held here in part for many years. In celebration of Monica’s work, a series of events and actions will be happening throughout the exhibition, brought to the project by friends, former collaborators and the Monica Ross Archive.
This project has been made possible by the support of the Monica Ross Archive in the form of Alice Ross and Bernard G Mills, with additional support from DACS – the Design and Artists Copyright Society.
Preview: Friday 18 July, 18:00 – 20:00
British Sign Language (BSL) interpretation will be available for the speeches at the preview provided by Sue MacLaine
Events related to this exhibition:
Saturday 19 July, 1 pm
Talk by Dr. Alexandra Kokoli – Main Gallery
Dr. Kokoli has written extensively on Monica Ross since first meeting her in Brighton in the early 2000s, and will reflect on the exhibition and Monica’s legacy. With huge thanks to Dr. Kokoli.
Image (above) – Unquiet Woman – courtesy of the archive
Image (left) – I Wallpapered this Myself – courtesy of the archive
Members Area