Light Years Ahead
Curated with Alison McKenna, Monica Sjöö, Alice O’Malley, Delaine Le Bas, Vivienne Dick, Ptolemy Mann, Fiona Finnegan, Sandra Vasquez de la `Horra, Forouz Zarei, Jessica Mallock, Sarah Staton, Grace Ndiritu, Jennifer Binnie, Helen Melland, Alison Lloyd, Monica Ross and Alison McKenna.
“The Mother is calling us at this late hour. She is rising within us.”
Light Years Ahead is inspired by the work of Monica Sjöö, (1938 -2005), a Swedish born British artist. She was also a writer, an ecofeminist and an early exponent of the Goddess movement, working when what she was saying was deeply unfashionable and provocative. She advocated freedom of oppression in all its forms and was a leading voice in the Women’s Liberation Movement in the UK in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
One of the films being screened in the exhibition is a portrait of Sjöö by Jane Jackson. In this exhibition the Greenham Common Peace Camp is emblematic of the intersections of environmental and feminist activism. Greenham Common was the site of an American Nuclear base and there was a sustained peaceful campaign against it that began in 1981 and continued throughout the 80s.
This exhibition celebrates their bravery and courage of the women whom participated in this and other direct action in facing down governmental injustice. All of the artists in this exhibition explore in differing ways how their spiritual identities inform and sustain protest. As guardians of this future calling in our divine vision, participating artists engage with women’s rights, social justice, and protecting the environment. Some are mothers, some are shamans and all are light workers.
The show title Light Years Ahead suggests an alternative yet possible future brought into the present where spirituality, peace and political change are united and directed by feminine qualities.
