Raven Row, 2017

“For a few spring months in 1974 a small terraced house in Lambeth, South London at 14 Radnor Terrace was taken over by the feminist art group S.L.A.G. (South London Art Group). They transformed it into a large-scale installation artwork titled A Woman’s Place, which offered a temporary critique of family life. The building was also the location of the South London Women’s Centre, one of many squatted houses in the area that provided homes for a fluctuating and itinerant community of women. By the end of the decade the street was evacuated, the buildings were knocked down and the community was dispersed to make way for new property developments in the Vauxhall area. If traces of the street have all but disappeared from view, A Woman’s Place is even harder to see.

This publication occupies that absence, documenting the fragments that remain of the installation and the context in which it came to be. It is a story about art, activism, squatting, and the women’s liberation movement. Despite renewed interest in the politics of the 1970s, this story has been hard to piece together. It depends on the memories of those who were there, and I am thankful to Gail Chester, Frankie Green, Roberta Henderson, Lesley Mair, Kathy Nairne, Su Richardson, Rosemary Schonfeld, Lisa Tickner and Sue Madden, for sharing their stories. Thanks must also go to the families of Kate Walker and Monica Ross, who granted access to their personal papers and spoke with enormous generosity about their life and art.” - Amy Tobin