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Amy Tobin
Fellow

Dr Amy Tobin

Bye Fellow; Bye Fellow in History of Art

Website

Biography

At Cambridge, I teach modern and contemporary art across the Tripos, and convene the special subject module 'Vision and Representation in Contemporary Art', which focuses on the politics of representation, figuration, surveillance and censorship in recent art and visual culture.

My research is concerned with histories of feminism and art. I am currently working on a book project on sisterhood and the women's liberation movement in Britain and the US, which emerges from my PhD thesis 'Working Together, Working Apart: Feminism, Art and Collaboration in Britain and North American, 1970ā€“1981' completed in 2017 at the University of York under the supervision of Jo Applin. I have written on numerous artists including Helen Chadwick, Rose English, Rose Garrard, Eva Hesse, Candace Hill, Alexis Hunter, Suzanne Lacy, Linder, Rosemary Mayer, Julie Mehretu, Howardena Pindell, Cecilia VicuƱa, Jo Spence and Hannah Wilke, and curated exhibitions on , , , , , and Sutapa Biswas at Kettle's Yard. I also regularly write art criticism for .

I was a pre-doctoral fellow at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. in 2014 and a Terra Foundation for American Art pre-doctoral researcher in 2014ā€“5. After my PhD I won post-doctoral research grants from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Henry Moore Foundation. In 2019-20 I was the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Paul Mellon Centre's Anglo-American Art Research fellow, and in the same year also received a Terra foundation post-doctoral travel grant and a library grant from the , Atlanta.

I have taught modern and contemporary art history and theory at the Universities of York and Birmingham, as well as at Goldsmiths, University of London, City and Guilds Art School and West Dean College. My research is published in , MIRAJ and and I have contributed chapters to Collaboration and its (Dis)Contents, (Courtauld Books Online, 2017), Other Cinemas: Politics, Culture and Experimental Film in the 1970s (IB Tauris, 2017), Feminism and Art History Now (IB Tauris, 2017) and A Companion to Feminist Art (Blackwell, 2019). I am also a co-editor of London Art Worlds: Mobile, Contingent and Ephemeral Networks 1960ā€“1980 (Penn State University Press, 2018) with Jo Applin and Catherine Spencer. I co-edited The Art of Feminism (Chronicle and Tate, 2018) with Lucy Gosling, Helena Reckitt and Hilary Robinson.

Research

My research interests include: the relationship between feminism, art practice and art history; art and queer theory; art and post-colonialism; art and critical race theory; British and American art in the 1970s and 1980s; experimental cinema and moving image art; collaboration, collectivity and community in Modern and Contemporary art.

I am interested in supervising graduate research on gender, race, sexuality or class in 20th or 21st century art or visual culture, as well as projects on Modern or Contemporary British or American art or visual culture more broadly. I welcome enquiries from prospective students for MPhil and PhD.

I co-organise the project: with Dr Catherine Grant (Goldsmiths) and Dr Rachel Warriner (Courtauld Institute of Art). 

Authored work

  • Books

     A Womanā€™s Place, exh. cat. London: Raven Row, 2017. Text available at: 

     

     Edited Books

    With Alessandro Vincentelli, Sutapa Biswas, Cambridge and Gateshead: Kettleā€™s Yard and BALTIC, 2021.

     

    Linderism, Cambridge: Kettleā€™s Yard and Koenig Books, 2020.

     

    With Devika Singh, Homelands: Art from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, Cambridge: Kettleā€™s Yard, 2019.

     

    With Lucy Gosling, Helena Reckitt, Hilary Robinson, Art of Feminism, London and San Francisco: Tate and Chronicle Books, 2018. [responsible for: ā€˜Defining Feminism 1960ā€“1989ā€™.] [Translated into French and published by Hugo in 2019; Russian edition slated for 2021].

     

    With Jo Applin, Catherine Spencer, London Art Worlds: Mobile, Contingent and Ephemeral Networks 1960ā€“1980, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018. Out Now: 

     

    Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

    Women and Work: A Document on the Division of Labour in Industry 1974 by Margaret Harrison, Kay Hunt and Mary Kelly, Tate In Focus Research Publication. [forthcoming]

     

    ±į±š°ł±š²õ¾±±š²õā€™ Heresies: Collaboration and Dispute in a Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, Women: A Cultural Review, Special Issue ā€˜Danger: Women Readingā€™ edited by Victoria Horne.

     

    ā€˜Iā€™ll Show You Mine, If You Show Me Yoursā€™, in the ā€˜Mediating Collaborationā€™ special edition of Tate Papers, edited by Catherine Spencer, Amy Tobin and Harry Weeks, no. 25, Spring 2016.

     

    ā€˜Moving Pictures: Intersections between Art, Film and Feminism in the 1970sā€™ in MIRAJ, Feminisms Special Issue, edited by Catherine Elwes, vol.4, no.1ā€“2, Spring 2016: 118ā€“135.

     

    Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters

    ā€˜On Feminism, Art and Collaborationā€™ in A Companion to Feminist Art, edited by Hilary Robinson and Maria Buszek, Blackwell, 2019.

     

    with Fiona Anderson, 'Collaboration is Not an Alternative', Collaboration and its (Dis)Contents, (Courtauld Books Online, 2017).

     

    ā€˜Rapunzel, Let Down Your Hair (1978)ā€™ in Other Cinemas: Politics, Culture and British Experimental Film in the 1970s edited by Sue Clayton and Laura Mulvey, I.B. Taurus, 2017. 

     

    With Victoria Horne, ā€˜An Unfinished Revolution in Art Historiography, Or How to Write a Feminist Art History?ā€™ Feminist Review, no.107, 2014: 75ā€“83. Republished in Feminism and Art History Now: Writing, Curating and Caring for the Past, IB Taurus, 2017. 

     

    Other Publications

     ā€˜Hesse/ Wilkeā€™, Erotic Abstraction: Hesse and Wilke, New York, Acquavella and Rivoli, 2020.

     

    &²Ō²ś²õ±č;ā€˜Linderism: The Red Periodā€™, Linderism, Cambridge and London: Kettleā€™s Yard and Koenig Books, 2020.

     

    &²Ō²ś²õ±č;ā€˜Feminist Sisterhood: Difference in the Womenā€™s Art Movementā€™, HistĆ³rias das mulheres, HistĆ³rias feministas, edited by Andre Mesquita. Sāo Paolo: Museu de Arte de SĆ£o Paulo, 2019.

     

    &²Ō²ś²õ±č;ā€˜Sfumato “”²µ²¹¾±²Ōā€™, Julie Mehretu: Prints and Drawings, Cambridge: Kettleā€™s Yard, 2019.

     

    &²Ō²ś²õ±č;ā€˜Approach to Fearā€™, Alexis Hunter, London: Goldsmiths, 2018.

     

     With Catherine Elwes, ā€˜An Interview with Rose Garrardā€™, in MIRAJ, February 2018.

     

    &²Ō²ś²õ±č;ā€˜On Charityā€™, Kate Davis, Charity. Lux, 2017.

     

    &²Ō²ś²õ±č;ā€˜Collaboration, Art and Activism, 1970ā€“1981ā€™, in Jacqueline Morreau, London: Nunnery Gallery, 2017.

     

    &²Ō²ś²õ±č;ā€˜The Internationalism of Feminist Art in 1970s Britainā€™ in British Art Studies, vol.1, no.1 2015.