Women in Revolt! surfaces the lived experiences of a postwar generation of women artists that have, until now, been overlooked. These artists spent their careers and lives challenging the patriarchal power structures, often working in the margins of the museum system that rejected them, forming communities and finding new spaces to exhibit and share knowledge. For these artists, the legacy of trauma and wider global threat of military and nuclear action sat alongside increasing concern about ecological disaster, class struggles and protests around decolonisation, racism and misogyny. This book explores the incredible work created by women artists during a time of great social and political change, commencing with the formation of the women’s liberation art group and key events in 1970 and concluding in 1990, just after the introduction of Section 28 and the opening of the YBA Freeze show. It demonstrates how marginalised women’s needs and experiences were within mainstream culture, and reveals how these artists used radical ideas and methods to confront contemporary issues and fight for their place at the table. Showcasing a wide range of artists working in varied media, it celebrates a creative and politically engaged community that paved the way for future generations and changed the face of British culture.

Just as punk created a space for bands such as the Slits and Poly Styrene to challenge 1970s norms of femininity, through a transgressive, strident new female-ness, it also provoked experimental feminist film makers to initiate a parallel, lens-based challenge to patriarchal modes of film making. In this book, Rachel Garfield breaks new ground in exploring the rebellious, feminist punk audio-visual culture of the 1970s, tracing its roots and its legacies. In their filmmaking and their performed personae, film and video artists such as Vivienne Dick, Sandra Lahire, Betzy Bromberg, Ruth Novaczek, Sadie Benning, Leslie Thornton, Abigail Child and Anne Robinson offered a powerful, deliberately awkward alternative to hegemonic conformist femininity, creating a new "punk audio visual aesthetic". A vital aspect of our vibrant contemporary digital audio visual culture, Garfield argues, can be traced back to the techniques and forms of these feminist pioneers, who like their musical contemporaries worked in a pre-digital, analogue modality that nevertheless influenced the emergent digital audio visual culture of the 1990s and 2000s.

Just as punk created a space for bands such as the Slits and Poly Styrene to challenge 1970s norms of femininity, through a transgressive, strident new female-ness, it also provoked experimental feminist film makers to initiate a parallel, lens-based challenge to patriarchal modes of film making. In this book, Rachel Garfield breaks new ground in exploring the rebellious, feminist Punk audio-visual culture of the 1970s, tracing its roots and its legacies. In their filmmaking and their performed personae, film and video artists such as Vivienne Dick, Sandra Lahire, Betzy Bromberg, Ruth Novaczek, Sadie Benning, Leslie Thornton, Abigail Child and Anne Robinson offered a powerful, deliberately awkward alternative to hegemonic conformist femininity, creating a new "Punk audio visual aesthetic". A vital aspect of our vibrant contemporary digital audio visual culture, Garfield argues, can be traced back to the techniques and forms of these feminist pioneers, who like their musical contemporaries worked in a pre-digital, analogue modality that nevertheless influenced the emergent digital audio visual culture of the 1990s and 2000s.