Not Our Class (2011–2013) was a long-term programme of education and participatory projects taking the work of Jo Spence as a starting point for investigating the legacy and potentials of her work in relation to contemporary culture and life. Through a series of commissions, offsite projects, workshops, public events, and reading groups situated both within Studio Voltaire’s neighbourhood and contemporary art discourse the programme will explore the new turn towards education and participation within contemporary art practice. The programme included commissions by artists Marysia Lewandowska working with The Jo Spence Memorial Archive, and Rehana Zaman working with King’s College Hospital and Body & Soul. Additionally Mystique Holloway, Ego Ahaiwe, Louise Shelley, Gina Nembhard, Emma Hedditch, Lauren Craig and Zoe Holloway set up the research group X Marks The Spot based at Lambeth Women’s Project.
Jo Spence Radio Broadcast
X Marks The Spot
2012
The Jo Spence Radio Broadcast was produced by X Marks The Spot as part of Not Our Class (Part I – Part II), a two-year pilot programme of research and participatory projects in relation to the work of artist Jo Spence.
X Marks The Spot undertook a concerted period of research in conjunction with the Not Our Class and Jo Spence projects at Studio Voltaire, conducted by Mystique Holloway, Ego Ahaiwe, Louise Shelley, Gina Nembhard, Emma Hedditch, Lauren Craig, Yula Burin and Zoe Holloway.
Taking the focus of Spence’s work, on body image, health, and the representation of a life lived, in the most social-political form possible, this research does not stay on the page, or screen but has populated our daily lives and heightened our experience of the present. Through Spence’s approach to photography as a transformative process, documentation of her life with breast cancer, and education around alternative therapy and self-education through radical sociology, Spence’s work has pushed us to the limits of what we can involve ourselves in. We are taking on Spence’s ideas, with ourselves as subjects, and sharing with our present communities.
