Urania, 2015

series of posters

Urania was a journal published between 1915 and 1940. It was founded by a lesbian couple who were active suffragists, Esther Roper and Eva Gore-Booth, along with Thomas Baty (whose nom de plume was Irene Clyde). The name Urania refers to a specific idea of Utopia, as a place where the categories of ‘male’ and ‘female’ do not exist. In the early twentieth century those who did not neatly conform to social and sexual norms constructed around ideas of ‘male’ and ‘female’ behaviour, often referred to themselves as Uranians. The journal Urania was a kind of catalogue of incidents of gender troubling and feminist struggles; a collection of articles clipped out of newspapers from around the world that were re-published with very few editorial interventions, and distributed privately to a wide network of friends and supporters. Articles were often unsigned or published under a pseudonym used by several writers, which made Urania into an ‘institution’ that constituted itself through the voice of a collective. The little-known magazine was not illustrated, so this series of nine posters is an attempt to create a visual index of their interests.