‘Our Bodies are Not the Problem’, 2022

solo show at Maureen Paley, London

The exhibition brings together work from two of my most recent projects related to feminist history. They seek to make visible the sophisticated techniques of care, collaborative methods and forms of mutual education that have been developed and practised by feminist groups, especially in women’s spaces and activist organisations. 

In the grim context of our present moment, Plender’s research into feminist histories fit to be celebrated and calls to self-organise feel shockingly radical and urgent.

—Hettie Judah, Frieze, September 2022

East London Federation of the Suffragettes, 2020

ink on paper drawings

Accompanying the sound piece are a series of drawings which show the different activities of the East London Federation of the Suffragettes (ELFS). The group was founded by Sylvia Pankhurst in 1913, in collaboration with many working-class women from the East End of London, and eventually evolved into being the first communist party in the UK. In a converted pub, whose name was changed from The Gunmaker’s Arms to The Mothers’ Arms, the ELFS provided free specialist healthcare for women and children, a nursery run by a trained nurse, and a kindergarten that used progressive Montessori techniques focused on developing the creativity of the young. They also ran a network of women’s centres in East London; cost-price restaurants, provoking a discussion about the unaffordability of food to those on low wages; a co-operative toy factory; and a self-defence group called The People’s Army, to combat police violence at protests.

Plender’s practice is consistently questioning, sensitive, and politically vital.
—Tom Jeffreys, Art Agenda, November 2022

Our Bodies are Not the Problem, The Problem is Power, 2022

acrylic on canvas with dowels

Our Bodies Are Not the Problem, the Problem is Power is part of an ongoing project with Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL) and is based on my research in their archives on feminist and queer health activism. It began as an installation in the Community Room of GWL in which I highlighted the relationship between ill health and structures of inequality, including racism, sexism and transphobia.

The three new paintings, which are intended to look like educational instructional objects, are based on imagery from the women’s health handbook Our Bodies, Ourselves. First published in the USA by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective in 1970, the book resulted from Women’s Liberation workshops and consciousness raising groups, in which women gathered in order to learn about their bodies and how to demand their needs from a medical establishment that they viewed as paternalistic and condescending. It has gone on to be revised, republished, and repurposed around the world, adapted to different contexts by local feminist organisations and women’s health groups until today.