Chapman
slug
—
2024
“From this came the understanding that our histories, our future’s were everywhere”
— Emily Hesse in Blackbirds Born from Invisible Stars.
Awarded the 'Art in the Archive: A Slow Return' Bursary by the Women's Art Library and the Feminist Review, I spent July 2023 at the WAL. I took a slug like dérive through the boxes and got lost in unnamed slide files, of other artists that also wanted to refuse extraction, expansion, exploitation - I took inspiration from the slug, taking in what I felt would nourish me. After going fast through art and organising for 15 years I wanted this time to take a slower pace.
One year later, after life circumstances enforced a tougher kind of slowness on me, I returned to my residency notes to draw inspiration for a long and winding drawing. Presented at the WAL at an event with Abi Palmer author of 'Slugs: A Manifesto' alongside a text to be published in the Feminist Review March 2025.
Animation by Sophie Mallett and poetic image descriptions by Bella Milroy to come.
Photographs of slug drawing by Jordan Taylor.
Archival image credits: Li Cassidy, Jo Spence, Rita Keegan, Nyapanyapa Yunupingu, Elena Gaputyte, pamphlet on striking women in Harinegy 1982.