A Visual Homage to Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska

During May, we’re hosting a visual homage to Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska, a Polish writer and poet, whose last years were spent in an asylum in Gloucester.  Ania Ready and two artists’ collectives have created photographic responses to Sophie’s words, which will be displayed in our contemporary gallery.  On show will be:

• I Also Fight Windmills by Ania Ready
• We Also Fight Windmills – a collaborative project
• Projection: Hysterical Women by T¡T Collective

I Also Fight Windmills*

A photographic series by Polish-British artist Ania Ready, inspired by literary texts written by the modernist, trilingual and largely forgotten author of Polish origin Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska (1872-1925). Ania visually reimagines Sophie’s story of a migrant woman from Eastern Europe who travels west to Paris, New York and London to find employment, and more importantly to fulfil her creative ambitions of becoming a writer. The rigid rules of the old societal order, lack of opportunities for women, poverty and disillusionment lead to her mental instability. The heaviest blow comes with the loss of her partner – the modernistFrench sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska – in the First World War.

* A quote from Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska’s letter in which she wrote: “Do you know Don Quixote? His character is a bit like mine. I also fight windmills.”

About Ania Ready

Ania Ready is a Polish-British photographic artist and author based in Oxfordshire, UK. She works with photography, archives, and texts. In her work, she explores the human psyche, and how it can be affected by outside forces: societal, medical and political ones. Ania is interested in what it means to have an agency in how we look and respond to the world. She has a special interest in the topic of femininity, hysteria and madness. Ania creates images, collages, and also works with alternative, cameraless processes.

We Also Fight Windmills

A dynamic collection of works by 26 artists and writers from seven countries, exploring the themes of mental illness and creativity, social constraints and artistic freedom, memory, agency and connection. It was brought into being through an artistic collaboration initiated by Ania Ready, the author of I Also Fight Windmills. Ania invited artists and writers to creatively interpret the contents of her literary book which focuses on the life and works of forgotten feminist writer Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska.

By responding to photographic and textual prompts, the artists and writers created a unique reflection on the life of a talented but socially disadvantaged female artist figure, celebrating the power of artistic expression and the need for connection. This exhibition brings together a rich tapestry of photography, collage, embroidery and poetry, through which the artists challenge the stigma of mental illness and respond to themes of displacement, social exclusion, entrapment and loneliness within an open space for artistic and intellectual exchange. It is proof that art can lead to an emphatic encounter with difference, reaching across time and borders to discover what binds us. 

Participating artists: Amanda Denny, Ania Rolińska, Caitriona Dunnett, Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese, Emma Davies, Etain O’Carroll, Francesco Falciani, Gehrett Ellis, Irmgard Hueppe, Jonathan Dayman, Julie Sleaford, Karen Block, Laurence Harding, Lu Mazen, Madalina Androne, Mary Beth Willis, Mich Maroney, Mills Rowe, Monika Sosnowski, Paulina Poświata, Ruthie Collins, Sarah Capel, Sue Saunders, Teresa Smith, Viktoria Binges and Weronika Modrzejewska.

Hysterical Women (Projection)

15 self portraits inspired by Sophie’s novel Hysterical Women. This project is a collaboration with T¡T Collective, a group of female photographers, raised in Poland, based worldwide, exploring intimate relationships and their own biographies. The group is led by Irmina Walczak, the founder of the collective.

Sophie Brief Bio

Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska (b. 1872 in Galicia, Austro-Hungary, now Poland; d. 1925 in Gloucester, UK) was a modernist writer and poet who wrote in three languages: French, English, and her native Polish. She worked as a nanny, teacher, and domestic worker in Paris, Philadelphia, New York, London, and various other locations. Her body of work includes short stories, a novel, an autobiography, an 800-page diary, poems, and plays. She was the partner of the French modernist sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, with whom she formed a unique artistic alliance and they adopted each other’s surnames. They arrived in England together in 1911 to dedicate their lives to art and literature. Henri died in WW1 in 1915, Sophie lived for another decade. She left London for Wotton under Edge in Gloucestershire. Sophie’s writings are housed in special collections at the University of Cambridge, the University of Essex, Kettle’s Yard, and the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans in France. Her drawings are held at the National Galleries of Scotland. Tragically, she died forgotten in a mental asylum in Gloucester.