Women Speak Volumes in Conversation throws the spotlight on the work of pioneering creative older women whose stories need to be told. Over the course of seven weeks we will present seven ground-breaking women who have forged careers across different art forms and whose stories are an inspiration to us all.
Wednesday 19 March 2025 from 7.00-8.30pm
198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, 198 Railton Road, London SE24 0JT
£5
‘I do not remember the first time I took a photograph, but I did grow up in a house of family photo albums and the stories that went with them.’ So wrote photographer Dr Ingrid Pollard about her early inspiration. Over fifty years, this groundbreaking multimedia artist has carved out a space in the white, male-dominated world of art, making the invisible visible and revealing ‘what we always knew was there’.
Born in Georgetown, Guyana, Ingridcame to London at a young age. As a teenager she used her father’s camera to take pictures of the river Lea for a school geography project, foregrounding some of her interests seen in later compositions. Trained in printmaking, film and photography, Ingrid’s work centres on community arts, using portraiture and photography and challenging traditional notions of landscape imagery to explore social constructs such as Britishness or racial difference. She was one of twenty founding members of Autograph ABP (the Association of Black Photographers) in 1988. Some of her well-known works include Pastoral Interlude (1987–1988), Seaside Series (1989) and Self Evident (1995), which explore the presence of black people in the English landscape. Ingrid’s work has been widely exhibited, from Tate Britain to the National Art Gallery of Barbados. Among her many awards, she received the Royal Photographic Society Centenary Medal 2024 and the 2024 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, considered the most prestigious in the world, in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the art of photography.
Come and hear about the life and work of this visionary artist whose work has opened up art spaces for black and brown women everywhere. Ingrid will be in conversation with literary activist and creative entrepreneur Joy Francis, co-founder of Words of Colour.
These conversations are part of a wider project: Women Speak Volumes Between Generations. Produced in collaboration by Speaking Volumes, Words of Colour and the George Padmore Institute, in association with 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning and the University of Coastal Carolina.
This is the third of seven conversations running from 19 February to 14 May which will throw the spotlight on the work of pioneering older black women whose stories need to be shared.
The Women Speak Volumes project is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
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