Rejected Proposal - Women Artists of the North East Library writing commission, August 2022

In November 2020 North East-based artist Sally Madge died. At 74, Madge was still creating her legacy. She was renowned for her radical approaches to arts pedagogy with a reputation as a mischief-maker at Sunderland where she taught for years, and for being a woman who made space for others in the arts throughout her lifetime. An avid collector, particularly of debris, detritus, discarded objects and clothes, minerals and animal droppings – all traces of life in waste – Madge left a wondrous (or wandrous) archive from her encounters with the Northumbrian landscape and coast.

Barring essays by Tom Jennings, there has been little formal engagement with Madge. I interviewed her for Audiovisual Cultures Podcast in 2019, and in 2021 produced a 2-hour episode filled with testimonies of fellow artists and colleagues who had been impacted by Madge’s interest in them (she also collected the living whom she nurtured). I propose to use this opportunity to create a text for and using the WANE library concerning Madge’s work and the continuing effects of her mentorship on many other North East-based artists, particularly women, non-binary, disabled and disadvantaged practitioners. Hers is an exemplary story intersecting with the commission’s desired emphasis on archival methodologies and engagements with histories of artistic practice, exhibitions and pedagogy. It will demonstrate how vital revisionist work is in reinserting such figures back into histories from which they have been erased or made peripheral.

Utilising what I can find of her in WANE enhanced by access to her stored collections and the interviews I have conducted which may be added to the archive, for my piece I propose writing a text addressed to Madge outlining her impact. As Madge so often did in her wide-ranging practice, this will involve the collection of personal stories informed by theoretical concepts and archival research to ensure accuracy, detail, and to excavate the lesser-known aspects of Madge’s life and work. This relates to my own developing creative-critical writing which Madge had encouraged in me. For my ACE DYCP project I am blending life writing with arts research and critical analysis, and this WANE commission presents a testing ground for my approaches. My work is informed by reading on autotheory in which artists incorporate capital-T theory into personal work – something Madge did frequently and was reflected in the No Trace Without Resistance events in November 2021, the title referencing her engagements with the writings of deconstructionist theorist Jacques Derrida. She also literally at times incorporated theoretical books as objects in her performance work while taking their concepts for a meander.

Sally Madge is too fundamental for contemporary art in the North East to allow her to fall into obscurity. There is an urgency to recognise her legacy, and put right the neglect of her work in institutional settings. Alternative avenues have been exhausted, and the events of last year required much volunteer labour. We need WANE to recognise Madge, and to resource the work to do so in a way that shows WANE’s own significance.

 

Detail from Sally Madge's Scatter

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