The Ignorant Art School – Sit-in #4, Outside the Circle
Cooper Gallery - Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design University of Dundee, Scotland, 2024-2025
Featuring School of Revolutionary Girls by Suzanne Lacy and Nicola Goode
Inspired by the essential words of African-American writer, feminist and civil rights activist Audre Lorde in her seminal essay ‘The Master’s Tools will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’, Outside the Circle is an invitation to witness and participate in a season of radical emancipation, resistance, survival and collective action from both western and Global Majority countries.
Indexed by Dundee’s proud sobriquet ‘She Town’ and driven by the necessity to decolonize Euro-centric narratives, Sit-in #4 of The Ignorant Art School declares that no one should stand outside the circle of what the dominant political narrative defines as ‘acceptable’.
Reverberating with the attitude, poise and pose of feminist and queer ‘acting up’ that speaks the difficult truths of lived experience and social knowledge courageously to power, Outside the Circle unfolds the possibilities of assembly, collective actions and spirited protest as pedagogical interventions that defiantly empower the oppressed and marginalized.
For the exhibition, Suzanne commissioned the reading of the original manifestos produced by the participating teenage girls who explored their relationship to the 1916 Rising of the Irish revolution and to contemporary issues facing young women in Ireland during the ten day project. The reading of the participants’ manifestos can be watched here. Video by Conan McIvor.
Participants of School for Revolutionary Girls, 2016: Juno Hegarty, Molly Lambton, Lydia Ardill, Grace Dolan, Juno Kostick, Lauren Mcgovern, Aoife Bracken, Catherine Jordan, Lily Ní Dhrisceoil, Nicky Merriman, Leah Merriman, and Hannah Vance Cronin. Film Cast, 2024: Libby Conway Dunne, Jemima Daluz, Ava Dandy, Rachel Walsh, Claudia Knowles, Sacha McCabe, Isabel O’Farrell, Sophie Walsh, Katie Dawson, Grace Keogh, Mollie Foley, and Mia Wedick.
Curated by Sophia Yadong Hao.
Images: The Ignorant Art School | Sit-in #4 | Outside the Circle, 2024–2025, Cooper Gallery, DJCAD. Photography by Sally Jubb.