Making Spaces in the North East with Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative
May 6–July 23, 2022
39 High Bridge Street
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 1EW
UK
The Farrell Centre and Newcastle University’s School of Architecture Planning and Landscape, in association with Newcastle Contemporary Art, presents How We Live Now: Making Spaces in the North East with Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative.
The exhibition is built around an installation, originally curated by Jon Astbury and Jos Boys for the Barbican Centre in London (and made possible with Art Fund support), exploring the work of the radical 1980s feminist architecture co-operative Matrix, whose four founding members met while students at Newcastle University.
Featuring rare films, drawings, photos, architectural models, as well as posters, practice documents and press clippings, the installation explores Matrix’s approaches to design that aimed to empower groups often excluded in the design of buildings, including Black and Asian women’s organisations, community and childcare groups and lesbian and gay housing co-operatives, to explore more inclusive ways of designing, building and occupying spaces.
The installation has been designed by the feminist design collective, Edit, to reflect the design principles espoused by Matrix. Visitors are invited to move around and occupy four ‘pod’ structures which evoke the scale, materials and informality of domestic settings, while serving to frame and support material from the Matrix archive.
In the exhibition’s restaging at Newcastle Contemporary Art, the Matrix installation becomes a jumping off point for a display of contemporary projects from the North East of England, which engage with the spatial implications of questions around gender, accessibility, equality and discrimination.
Featured contemporary projects include Running as Feminist Activism—Sarah Ackland; Embodied Knowledge of the City—Natalie Bamford; Listen with Mother?—Louise Mackenzie, Kaajal Modi and Ruth Morrow; Broadcast Bartender—Toby Lloyd and Andrew Wilson; Women, Children and Play on Streets—Alison Stenning and Sally Watson; Is There a Right Time? Through The Eyes of Young Fathers—Michael J Richardson and Albert Potrony; Undutiful Spirit—Rossanna Morris, Harriet Sutcliffe and Gayle Miekle; Dwellbeing—Julia Heslop; and Fenham Pocket Park Project—Armelle Tardiveau and Daniel Mallo.
