Wollstonecraft Live! Exhibition

Katherine Vernez, Siddiqua Akhtar and Ros Philips reenact Mary Wollstonecraft, Newington Green 2007

Wollstonecraft Live! is a multimedia exhibition celebrating the life and achievements of eighteenth-century Hackney resident Mary Wollstonecraft.

Wollstonecraft, author of Vindication of the Rights of Women and widely regarded as the first British feminist, was born 250 years ago and lived in Hackney for many years, where she established a school at Newington Green and joined the congregation of the Unitarian Chapel.

Anna Birch, resident of Stoke Newington and artistic director of performance/film company Fragments and Monuments, considers Wollstonecraft a central figure in Hackney’s history of radical activity and dissent.

Birch was inspired to begin making work based on Wollstonecraft’s life when she discovered her connections to the local area.

The Wollstonecraft Live project began in 2005 with a multimedia site-specific theatre piece written by Kaethe Fine performed at the Unitarian Chapel.

A series of films, directed by Birch with Jana Riedel, were then projected back onto Newington Green where the original performance took place, creating layers of different historical moments in the same space.

The public were invited to attend and bring picnics, with the aim of involving the diverse local community with the history of the area.

One unusual feature of the performances is that Wollstonecraft herself is played by three actresses from different ethnic backgrounds; this, Birch believes, prevents the illusion that we can simply recreate history.

The characters speak directly to the audience about the processes of casting and rehearsing the show, breaking the ‘fourth wall’ that traditionally divides audience from perforners and the fictional world of the play from the reality outside.

The decidedly postmodern setting of the Hackney Museum, with its reconstructed fifties council estate kitchen and eel pie shop, seems a fitting place to showcase a project which interweaves past with present, truth with fiction.

This exhibition (conceived by Fragments and Monuments with the museum’s Exhibitions Officer, Sue McAlpine) centres on a large high-res photograph from a Wollstonecraft Live performance, showing one of the Marys projected into the night air above Newington Green.

The image highlights the ‘box dress’ worn by the actress; designed by Tina Lonergan, these dresses are both a response to the ‘teacup’ dresses of the eighteenth century, and a visual reference to the Wollstonecraft quotation reproduced here on the museum wall, which describes women as ‘confined in cages like the feathered race’.

Another impressive item on show is an original copy of Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women, loaned by the Hackney Archive.

In collaboration with South Korean artist Taey Iohe, Birch has produced a book, The Wollstonecraft Live Experience, which explores the idea of crossing borders of space, time, and culture in relation to the lives of Wollstonecraft and the Korean artist Hyeseok Na, who write each other letters as if they were haunting the streets of Stoke Newington today.

There is plenty in this book to tickle the fancy of Hackney aficionados, including authentic-looking ‘Air Hackney’ boarding passes, ‘tea party’ discussions held by groups of women in Hackney and in Seoul, performance art pieces and photographs around the local streets.

The project emphasises both Wollstonecraft’s local links and her passion for travel, and the artists have aspired to take this project across national borders, to New York, Seoul, and South Africa.

The exhibition also includes the Wollstonecraft Live! film, enabling visitors to see the past phases of the project.

Future plans for the project include projecting films on large public screens at Dalston Junction for the Cultural Olympiad, and further developing the Strangers in the Neighbourhood project in Hackney and beyond.

Finally, Fragments and Monuments are inviting everyone to help to create a collective ‘living monument’ to Wollstonecraft by contributing photographs of your favourite female role models. To contribute, send photographs to mary@fragmentsandmonuments.com

Photographs can be viewed here.

Wollstonecraft Live! Exhibition
6 January – 13 March 2010
Admission Free

Hackney Museum
Technology & Learning Centre
1 Reading Lane
E8 1GQ

020 8356 3500
hmuseum@hackney.gov.uk