Books in the Goldsmiths Press series

An illustrated history of the evolution of British women's cycle wear.The bicycle in Victorian Britain is often celebrated as a vehicle of women's liberation. Less noted is another critical technology with which women forged new and mobile public lives—cycle wear. This illustrated account of women's cycle wear from Goldsmiths Press brings together Victorian engineering and radical feminist invention to supply a missing chapter in the history of feminism.Despite its benefits, cycling was a material and ideological minefield for women. Conventional fashions were unworkable, with skirts catching in wheels and tangling in pedals. Yet wearing "rational” cycle wear could provoke verbal and sometimes physical abuse from those threatened by newly mobile women. Seeking a solution, pioneering women not only imagined, made, and wore radical new forms of cycle wear but also patented their inventive designs. The most remarkable of these were convertible costumes that enabled wearers to transform ordinary clothing into cycle wear.Drawing on in-depth archival research and inventive practice, Kat Jungnickel brings to life in rich detail the little-known stories of six inventors of the 1890s. Alice Bygrave, a dressmaker of Brixton, registered four patents for a skirt with a dual pulley system built into its seams. Julia Gill, a court dressmaker of Haverstock Hill, patented a skirt that drew material up the waist using a mechanism of rings or eyelets. Mary and Sarah Pease, sisters from York, patented a skirt that could be quickly converted into a fashionable high-collar cape. Henrietta Müller, a women's rights activist of Maidenhead, patented a three-part cycling suit with a concealed system of loops and buttons to elevate the skirt. And Mary Ann Ward, a gentlewoman of Bristol, patented the "Hyde Park Safety Skirt,” which gathered fabric at intervals using a series of side buttons on the skirt. Their unique contributions to cycling's past continue to shape urban life for contemporary mobile women.

Key work by the artist Alexis Hunter.Sexual Warfare presents key work by Alexis Hunter (1948-2014), an influential figure in the Women's Artstrength, made between 1968 and 1986. The first solo presentation of Hunter's work in the UK since 2006, and in London since 1981, the exhibition brings her acerbic critique into dialogue with the contemporary moment and reinforces her importance The publication features essays by Dr Althea Greenan, Special Collections Curator at the Women's Art Library and Amy Tobin, Lecturer in the History of Art. Curator of Exhibitions, Events and Research at Kettle's Yard.

An illustrated history of the evolution of British women's cycle wear.

How forty-one women-including Dorothy Parker, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Lena Horne-were forced out of American television and radio in the 1950s "Red Scare."

The first monograph on the work of artist Tony Cokes, creating a visual cartography of a body of moving image work that spans twenty years.Tony Cokes's video works are eviscerating critiques and affective art works, bringing together color theory, sound, music, and texts, and quoting a polyphony of voices including Aretha Franklin, Mark Fisher, David Bowie, Public Enemy, and Donald Trump. Combining political and social commentary with cultural theory and a critique of capitalism, Cokes's works viscerally confront the social condition, particularly the prejudices and threats suffered by black subjects. This book is the first monograph on his practice, creating a visual cartography of a body of work that spans twenty years.It features four critical pathways into Cokes's decades-long practice, with essays contributed by notable academics, and conversations between Cokes and artist Kerry Tribe. Cokes's work deals with mediation and distribution, and the book itself becomes another conduit for the dissemination of theory, critique, and counter-narrative—a process that Cokes so powerfully engages in as an artist.This book accompanies Cokes's solo exhibition, If UR Reading This It's 2 Late: Vol. 1–3, across three international art institutions: Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London; Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University; and ARGOS centre for audiovisual arts, Brussels.ContributorsDan Byers, Tony Cokes, Christoph Cox, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Sarah McCrory, Sohrab Mohebbi, Kerry Tribe, Niels Van Tomme