Hannah Starkey: Inspire Sisterhood, 2022

Hannah Starkey
‘Inspire Sisterhood’, Women’s March, London 2017, 2017
C-type Photographic Print
342 x 455 mm
Edition of 50 (plus 7 artist proofs)
Signed and numbered by the artist

Going to the Women’s March was a watershed moment for me. I was very emotional and excited. It was a high! The atmosphere and the fact that women were standing up and men were standing up with them. You realised that you’re not on your own and I felt this sort of solidarity and freedom and total excitement with photography. Images were coming at me in a rate that I couldn’t possibly capture or process fast enough. This was a place full of women, and they all wanted to be photographed. They wanted to be seen. They’d made these beautiful signs. They were angry. There was a collective sense of asking “why are all these women feeling like this?”  - Hannah Starkey

‘Inspire Sisterhood’, Women’s March, London 2017, 2017 was taken by British artist Hannah Starkey at the 2017 Women’s March in London. Around this time, Starkey’s work took a decisive turn towards addressing political movements and representations of women’s activism. Inspired by protest marches taking place around the world, the artist began to photograph women as they took to the streets. Diverging from her usual practice of carefully staging her photographs, here Starkey immerses us in the real-time activity and language of communities that form through collective action. Rather than capturing the bustle of the huge crowds, Starkey offers moments of stoic solidarity as placards and banners speak the truths of the women holding them

This work has been generously produced as a limited edition by British photographer Hannah Starkey for The Hepworth Wakefield. It is also shown as the original larger-scale photographic work in the exhibition Hannah Starkey: Real Life, the first major survey of Starkey, on display at The Hepworth Wakefield, 1 October 2022 - 30 April 2023.

As is traditional in edition publishing, the price of the work will increase as the edition sells out.

‘Just as the so-called Young British Artists (Damien Hirst et al) were gaining notoriety, Starkey burst on to the scene with her photography graduation show in 1997, winning awards and acclaim. For decades, her intricately staged vignettes have focused on the place of women and girls in society, both physically and psychologically… An exhibition of Starkey’s work opening this month [at The Hepworth Wakefield] includes pictures from the 1990s, as well as more recent projects. In a departure from choreographed scenes, some of these document protests in London, such as the 2017 Women’s March and 2020 Black Lives Matter rally. There are also commissioned pieces made with 16-year-old performing arts students from Wakefield’s CAPA College. “They were all smart, sharp and sassy,” Starkey tells me. “Possibly the most professional artists I’ve worked with.”’ Financial Times Weekend Magazine

‘For more than 20 years, Belfast-born Hannah Starkey’s artfully constructed portraits have captured the gestures of everyday female experience.’ The Guardian

‘Driven by familiar narratives, Hannah stages everyday moments with precision and skill; taking the quotidian, re-enacting and editing it according to her own vision.’ It’s Nice That

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