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 WA...