My artwork Our Bodies Are Not the Problem (2021) will be shown alongside works by celebrated female artists including Mary Kelly and Sonia Boyce, as part of 'What Remains' – a group exhibition celebrating 40 years of the The Women's Art Collection at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. 

The show is a feminist look at the history of medicine and includes a wide range of my recent and new work, ranging from painting, to installation, textiles and sound. It also includes the seventeenth century medical casenotes of astrologer doctor Richard Napier, who practiced humoral medicine based on the ancient theory of the four humors. 

Exhibition Opening: Friday 22 May

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"Olivia Plender’s show, ‘Little Fennel’s Complaint’ explores people’s strenuous attempts to define the contours of their pain in language...and the simultaneous dismissal of such efforts, the silence to which sick bodies are too often consigned."

–Luisa Lorenza Corna

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I am currently reading this new book, featuring my projects Our Bodies are Not the Problem at Glasgow Women's Library (2021) and 'Chronos: health, access and intimacy' at Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, alongside works by many brilliant artists. Amanda Cachia argues that contemporary disabled artists are offering a new hospital aesthetics, defined as artwork that explores the ever-subjective experience of being sick and ill, set apart from and outside of a clinical and therapeutic setting, and in opposition to the medical model of disability. 

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I am participating in the 13th edition of the Göteborg Biennial, curated by Christina Lehnert. In times of war, polarization and authoritarian tendencies, the biennial aims to investigate how art can facilitate dialogue and reflection and make resistance possible. The artworks are rooted in an attitude of care that extends beyond personal concerns. It's title originates in a line from a poem by Solmaz Sharif.

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The starting point for this triennial is the fatal witch trials which took place in 1675 at Häxberget (The Witch Mountain) in Ångermanland, Sweden. 100 innocent individuals, almost exclusively women, were executed and burned at the stake. Bringing together artworks by around 30 artists at nine locations across this region in the north of Sweden, the exhibition is curated by Karolina Aastrup and Helena Byström. I will exhibit my watercolour series Bringing Down the Flowers, which depict plants historically used for medicinal purposes, including to induce abortion.

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‘Dream Time Ireland’, a group exhibition at Carlow County Museum, curated by Sean Lynch, in which I am showing an artwork. With an emphasis on public art, social and conceptual practice, ‘Dream Time Ireland’ reveals an undercurrent of exchange and interaction between art and society, proposing artmaking as a way to live, make and share the complex world and environments we encounter today.

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I am participating in the upcoming Sharjah Biennial, held in the UAE and titled, to carry. A multi-vocal and open-ended proposition, the ever-expanding list of what to carry, and how to carry it, is an invitation to encounter the different formations and positions of the five curators as well as the constellation of resonances that they have gathered. Curated by Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala, Zeynep Öz.

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Komtemåtta – A Pioneering Safe Space for Women is an exhibition that I am participating in at KIN Museum for Contemporary Art, in the north of Sweden, which travels to Liljevalchs, Stockholm. The Fogelstad Women’s Citizenship School, 1925-1954, serves as the inspiration behind the show – a Swedish self-organised educational experiment created by women, for women. Curated by Maria Lind and Hanna Nordell the exhibition also features Petra Bauer, Åsa Elzen, Åsa Sonjasdotter, Anders Sunna and Susanne Ewerlöf, as well as archival material, and artworks by Siri Derkert (1888-1973).

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The exhibition is accompanied by a special issue of Ord & Bild, with cover art by Olivia Plender.

Delayed by unforeseen circumstances, our study of the works of late filmmaker Johan Riding has finally been published by Mörel Books.

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Memorial for Sylvia Pankhurst is a summer project that I have just finished installing at Southbank Centre, London. It comprises a temporary monument celebrating the work of British artist, suffragette and anti-fascist Sylvia Pankhurst. Despite her leading role in winning votes for women in the UK she not been memorialised in a public statue in Britain. Pankhurst’s later campaigns against fascism and imperialism are relatively unknown, much of which focussed on the cause of Ethiopian independence, and the influence of her socialist feminist ideas on the formation of a welfare state in Britain.

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I have curated an exhibition themed around the topic of health, in collaboration with Cecilia Widenheim, borrowing approaches from feminism, disability justice movements and ‘crip’ perspectives. Many of the artworks explore how ‘crip’ experiences such as vulnerability and dependence allow us to question the high value that our society places on qualities such as self-sufficiency and productivity. How can we change our approach to time, and develop creative new models for mutual care and community?

Exhibiting artists: Jessie Bullivant, Cecilia Germain, Melanie Gilligan, Goldin+Senneby, Jakob Jakobsen, Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative, Park McArthur, Olivia Plender, Ihra Lill Scharning, Vård och värde, Constantina Zavitsanos

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In this group exhibition I am showing my series of watercolour paintings titled Bringing Down the Flowers, representing plants that were historically used by women to induce abortion.

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Hag Nag Harpy Hen brings together artworks from several of my most recent projects, related to feminist history and health activism. The exhibition includes a new sound installation, as well as drawings and paintings.

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A box – housing artists’ contributions such as editions, scores, instructions, objects, and tools – is distributed simultaneously in ten selected schools across Poland. Decisions about how to bring each artwork into being are made by the pupils together with their teachers. The interpretation and arrangement of the works is guided by the needs and feelings of the exhibition’s users – the children.

Participating artists: Adriano Costa, Jaroslaw Flicinski, Veronika Hapchenko, Edith Karlson, Krzysztof Maniak, Ahmet Öğüt, Olivia Plender, Laure Prouvost.

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My artwork Set Sail for the Levant: A Board Game About Debt (or a Social Satire) (2007) is now on display at Tate Britain, London. Through dialogue between historical and contemporary artworks, the new rehang of the collection inserts 'history from below' into the story of Britain as a nation.

For the summer issue of Tate etc. magazine, I have also written an article about the two historical paintings by George Stubbs – titled Haymakers and Reapers (1785) – which sit next to my artwork in the eighteenth-century room at Tate Britain.

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I am participating in the group exhibition ‘The Living House’, at Van Gogh House, London. Celebrating 150 years since Van Gogh lived in London the show departs from the idea that his old boarding house is still alive and inhabited, with artworks situated among the objects and rooms within Van Gogh House's collection, from newspapers and children’s toys to the bathroom, garden, and beds.

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I have contributed a text for the exhibition catalogue of ‘Monica Sjöö: The Great Cosmic Mother’. Born in Sweden, Monica Sjöö lived most of her adult life in Bristol, UK and was a key figure in both the Women’s Liberation and Goddess movements. The book includes texts by Amy Budd, Jennie Klein, Olivia Plender, Jill Smith, Lucy Stein, Monica Sjöö, Amy Tobin, Jo Widoff, Annika Öhrner.

On 19 September 2023 I will be doing a public talk at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, about the exhibition.

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I have made a short video for The Voice of the Artist, a web-based project consisting of an unruly alphabet of commissioned artist videos about topics that interest all of us. I took the letter ‘W’, which led me to make a video about the word ‘Witch’, its connection to feminism, and my experiences in a coven in the 1990s.

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I am pleased to announce that I will exhibit in Poland, for the first time, in the group exhibition ‘Spring Never Comes Again - Art and Education in the 20th and 21st centuries’ at Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw. The exhibition focuses on childhood and education, addressing the fascination of avant-garde artists with the art of the child. It includes historical artworks, along with works by contemporary artists.

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In celebration of Drawing Room’s twentieth birthday, I will be looking back to the group exhibition ‘TINA’ that I curated in 2008, with participating artist Ciprian Mureşan. The show explored the effects of the financial system on cultural production and aimed to challenge Margaret Thatcher’s notorious neo-liberal statement ‘there is no alternative’ (TINA for short). Presciently, the exhibition's opening coincided with the start of the Global Financial Crisis in October 2008.

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I am participating in the ‘59th October Salon’ – Belgrade Biennale, held at venues throughout the city, with my video installation Hold Hold Fire (2019).

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Commissioned by the ICA, Hold Hold Fire (2019) is inspired by my ongoing research into the East London Federation of the Suffragettes, and was produced after an extensive series of workshops with women’s groups across London exploring the women’s suffrage movement from contemporary feminist perspectives. The screening is accompanied by a discussion with Janna Graham and Kirsten Lloyd.

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This autumn I will have a solo show at Maureen Paley gallery in London. The exhibition brings together artworks from two of my most recent projects related to feminist history, addressing women’s health inequality and the legacy of the book Our Bodies Ourselves, which was first published in the 1970s; as well as the East London Federation of the Suffragettes.

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An exhibition taking place in the ruins of a medieval abbey in the town of Glastonbury ­– the capital of England’s New Age movement – exploring support systems, social experiments and religious beliefs. I will be showing a series of artworks which trace the origins of New Age ideas – alongside objects from the historic Abbey’s collections, a film by Rory Pilgrim, and performances by Sally O'Reilly.

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A Swedish translation of part of my comic The History of Animal Kingdom is featured in Ord & Bild – one of Sweden's oldest culture magazines. This special issue is on the exhibition ‘The TV Trampoline: from Children's Television to Contemporary Art and Literature’, which is currently touring Sweden.

Kalmar Konstmuseum, 9 April – 18 September 2022; Bildmuseet Umeå, 21 October 2022 – 29 January 2023; and Norrtälje konsthall, 3 June – 9 September 2023; 3 October 2023 – 7 January 2024, Konstmuseet i Norr, Kiruna.

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I am pleased to announce my solo show and screening at Amant Foundation in New York. The exhibition brings together, for the first time, a series of artworks which each depart from a play written by activist Sylvia Pankhurst, circa 1913. This includes the video installation Hold Hold Fire, which was shown at the 34th Bienal de São Paulo, along with a sound piece, posters, and a new wall painting.

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In protest against the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine, I have closed my solo show which was scheduled to open at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art education centre on the 25 February 2022.

I am participating in an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France, with a series of artworks about the Kibbo Kift Kindred, an early twentieth-century British youth movement. ‘The School of Creators’ addresses experimental models of pedagogy in relation to art and art education: from Fluxus happenings to feminist consciousness-raising groups, from Lettrist hypergraphies to hyperlink navigation, from school broadcasting to the video university dreamed of by Nam June Paik, from mutual teaching to the self-constructions of Italian anti-design, from kindergartens to permaculture workshops.

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I am pleased to announce that my comic The History of Animal Kingdom will be shown in Moscow as part of an exhibition exploring the cultural history of children’s television, curated by Andjeas Ejiksson and Maria Lind. A new Russian translation of the comic will also be featured in the online journal for culture colta.ru, as a ‘Christmas present’ to their readers.

The exhibition tours to:

9 April – 18 September 2022, Kalmar konstmuseum, Sweden

21 October 2022 – 29 January 2023, Bildmuseet Umeå, Sweden

3 June – 9 September 2023, Norrtälje konsthall, Sweden

3 October 2023 – 7 January 2024, Konstmuseet i Norr, Kiruna, Sweden

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An exhibition of films, videos and other art works by women based in Sweden, Russia and beyond, which includes several of my artworks based on the history of the Fogelstad Women's Citizenship School. The works in the show address and perform various aspects of the lives and experiences of women, such as family relations, self-organisation, emancipation, and the struggle for equality. ‘Moving Women’ is curated by Maria Lind.

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This autumn I am participating in the 34th Bienal de São Paulo – in Oscar Niemeyer’s iconic Pavilhão da Bienal in Parque Ibirapuera – with a video installation Hold Hold Fire (2019) and a specially commissioned series of new drawings, titled Arrest! (2021).

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Filling the space of the gallery, we hear a montage of female voices describing their daily lives and experience of unpaid care work, a punitive benefits system, precarious housing conditions, racism and detention, in a newly commissioned sound piece made for this solo exhibition at The Bower. A publication accompanies the exhibition.

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Marking the centenary of female suffrage in Sweden, Moderna Museet has invited me to speak at a conference exploring how women in the early 20th century managed to change society and their own conditions as citizens and cultural creators.

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I have been commissioned to make a new installation for Glasgow Women’s Library, as part of ‘Life Support’, a group exhibition curated by Caroline Gausden, Kirsten Lloyd, Nat Raha and Catherine Spencer. The artwork, titled Our Bodies Are Not the Problem, the Problem is Power, focuses on activism around women’s health inequality and will permanently transform the library’s Community Room.

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I am pleased to announce that Tate Gallery have purchased two of my artworks: the sound installation Learning to Speak Sense (2015), and the board game Set Sail for the Levant (2007) which will be on display at Tate Britain, London, from 2023.

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Malmö Konstmuseum has bought Urania (2015) for their collection. This series of nine off-set litho posters will be on display in the exhibition ‘(in) visible: Abstractions and fragments of queerness’ from 12 June 2021 – 9 January 2022.

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A political satire, which I started drawing in March 2020 at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, in order to entertain my friends whom I could no longer meet in person. A new episode published every Saturday on Instagram.

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I have been awarded my largest public art project to date, for the city of Falkenberg in the west of Sweden. During 2019-2020 I will be working with community groups at the library and school that form part of the new Argus Culture and Knowledge Centre. The final art works will be installed in the building in 2023, with plans to realise another series of ambitious art works in the near future for a new public park on the site.

To celebration the centenary of women gaining the vote in Sweden, several of my artworks will be on display at the Swedish Embassy in Moscow for the duration of 2021. These include the installation Kom Te Måtta, about the Fogelstad Women's Citizenship School, along with a newly commissioned series of drawings representing the first five women to enter the Swedish parliament, in 1921.

In this podcast I speak about productivity and care, about suffragettes and museums, and about adolescence and schools. I look at groups without charismatic leaders, embodied education, and the possibility of transforming errors in honest discussions. I also talk about women gaining authority through voice training – the material aspect of speech – and about how, sometimes unconsciously, we adopt a voice for which we feel socially rewarded.

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I am delighted to have contributed to this brilliant programme by my friend Dr. Elsa Richardson, in which she explores the lasting impact of the ideas of radical early twentieth-century publisher CW Daniel and their legacy at a time of fundamental change today.

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Several of my artworks will be featured in this touring group exhibition on the topic of Spiritualism, curated by Lars Bang Larsen, Simon Grant and Marco Pasi. The catalogue includes my work alongside some great artists from the nineteenth century until the present day, so if you are unable to make it to the show get your hands on one of those instead.

10 September – 1 November 2020, Drawing Room, London

Touring to:

15 Oct – 11 Dec 2021, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool

8 Jan – 13 Mar 2022, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea

31 Mar – 26 Jun 2022, Millenium Gallery, Sheffield

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As part of Maureen Paley’s participation in Artissima, I will make a solo presentation, including a selection of new works on paper. I am featured in Artissima’s ‘Disegni’ section, which explores the works of ten female artists looking to probe the ‘drawing cosmos’. The artworks will be shown alongside a series of podcasts and interviews. Artissima XYZ: ‘Disegni’ has been curated by Bettina Steinbrügge and Letizia Ragaglia.