OUR 2024 PROGRAM

In 2024, The Feminist Lecture Program embarked on our first curatorial project, in collaboration with Friends of Nunhead Cemetery, and a cohort of incredible emerging artists, we developed present a unique educational program culminating in a series of solo shows in the stunning venue of Nunhead Cemetery Chapel in South London.  

Throughout the program, our cohort explored a shared thematic curiosity in feminism, community, ecology and environmentalism. Week by week, the artists were given access to a selection of gender studies lectures from our back catalogue, as well as a curated series of online seminars led by our director Luisa-Maria MacCormack. They also received studio visits and mentorship from two creative professionals in the lead up to their shows.

Click below to explore the works…

THEO DUNNE: FROM THE GROUND UP

“Ancient texts found on immaculately preserved cassette tapes. A tree root unearths the entrance/exit to an underground dwelling, complete with rusting chandelier and a waterlogged Lost Boys DVD. Impossible notes tacked to the remnants of a headstone sealed in a plastic sandwich bag.  

An uncertain amount of time ago, an unknown human became enamoured with a cracked open grave. What will happen next changes the fragile order of things for good. 

Step through the chapel gates at Nunhead Cemetery and enter From The Ground Up, a new solo show by Theo Dunne presented by Feminist Lecture Program and Friends of Nunhead Cemetery. Playing with themes of fluidity in gender and time, visitors are encouraged to abandon ideas of what is True and embrace the chimera of materials, text, and happenings that surround you.”

WEBSITE: https://theodunneart.com/

INSTAGRAM: @theodunneart

ELLA YOLANDE: FIND US IN THE SLIP SPACES

“Tangled in thoughts about the vegetal, wildness, seeds and our messy, multi-species bodies, Yolande’s practice is informed by queer ecologies, ideas of resilience, preservation and the more-than-human. This solo exhibition showcases textiles, plant matter, digital print and sound. The works draw on plant histories and symbology, land based folklore and thin spaces. The central space is inhabited by a textile archway embedded with medicinal and symbolic plants, slowly gathered from around the cemetery. Touching on ideas of thin spaces within folklore, the sculpture provides a portal through which to imagine what might lie just on the other side, moving just beneath the surface of our understanding of the perceived world.”

WEBSITE: https://ellayolande.co.uk/

INSTAGRAM: @ellayolande

ANDIE AYLSWORTH: SACRED ECOLOGY OF THE UNIVERSAL EVERYTHING

“Sacred Ecology of the Universal Everything” subverts the idea of nature as a stage in which human history is enacted upon and instead presents it as an active agent of history. Inspired by Shela Sheikh's assertion that ‘plants were and are of course never simply neutral and passive botanical objects but have always been actors on the stage of history and politics itself' (The Wretched Earth, 2018), Aylsworth creates a venerative space within Nunhead Cemetery Chapel to facilitate moments of recognition for the vegetal kin embedded in the works presented in the exhibition.”

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/andie.aylsworth.studio/

WEBSITE:  https://andieaylsworth.com/

MOLLY LESTER: THE WORLD TO AN EEL IS A NET

For her first solo exhibition, Molly has produced a new body of work in collaboration with the Feminist Lecture Program and Friends of Nunhead Cemetery. ‘The world to the eel is a net' responds to the unique context of Nunhead Cemetery and traces the connections between technology, ecology, and heritage. The show centers around a folk tale, reimagined by Molly to poke fun at our overly hubristic assumption that technology belongs to us and that in creating it, we elevate ourselves above the messy unpredictability of nature.

Comprising large-scale quilted works and an installation of soft sculptures, 'The world to the eel is a net' situates itself within the landscape of English folk customs and acts as much as a modern mummers play or pantomime as it does an exhibition. The performers - a nun, morris dancer, football hooligan and policeman - gleefully move across the quilt and out into the chapel, finding themselves perilously entangled within the more-than-human world.

Molly has employed traditional textile crafts to create the works that, in their familiarity as objects of the home, feel comforting and perhaps a little kitsch. Their mundanity is subverted by a black comedy woven through the show, where unexpected moments of gore and violence are juxtaposed with delicate patch-working and benign stitched smiles.

INSTAGRAM: @mollylester_art

PUER DEORUM: VERSES OF THE LOVE DEAD

Feminist Lecture Program and Friends of Nunhead Cemetery are proud to present “Verses of the Love-Dead", a solo exhibition by Puer Deorum at the Nunhead Cemetery Chapel, activated by two new site specific live performance works. The curated performance and sculptural works, influenced by current global affairs, form a vigil to the martyrs we’ve lost, a zeitgeist to current time, and mortality. Symbols embedded within the collection of works interplay serving as a homage to the ongoing struggle for liberation in Palestine, the interconnected roots of genocide occurring simultaneously in countries such as Congo and Sudan, and the recent vanguard of student protests in Bangladesh which led to the fall of 15 years of fascist dictatorship.

 The title of the exhibition derives from an interpretation of the ancient Persian poem Layla and Majnun originally documented in written form in the 12th century by Nizami Ganjavi. The unfurling of the tale of two devotional lovers torn apart, lamenting their love, cut short by death.

INSTAGRAM: @puer_deorum