In this first instalment of #GetToKnow, we are featuring Dr. Ingrid Pollard, whose artworks are featured in the Women In Revolt! exhibition. This article will introduce Pollard’s work with a short bio to then focus on Pastoral Interlude and her work Lenthall Road Printing Workshop in Hackney.
Bio
Dr. Ingrid Pollard (b. 1953 in Georgetown, Guyana) is a British artist and photographer known for her series questioning social constructs such as Britishness and racial difference. She was trained in film and video at the London College of Printing (now Communication) and went on to receive an MA in photographic studies from the University of Derby. In 2016 she was awarded a PhD doctorate from the University of Westminster. Pollard is also a founding member of Association of Black Photographers (now Autograph ABP) and was a Turner Prize 2022 for her exhibition Carbon Slowly Turning.
Pastoral Interlude (1987)
Pollard is widely known for her landscape portraiture, best exemplified by Pastoral Interlude. In the work, the artist explores themes of race, belonging, Britishness and rurality. Pastoral Interlude features image-text compositions depicting young black people in rural environments accompanied by words which are in tension with the images. As the artist mentioned in an interview for the Guardian, it irks her that often her work is misinterpreted and the text accompanying the images are misread as captions implying the alienation of Black people toward the British rural landscapes.
“People want me to say that I’m alienated because then they can say: ‘Oh, I understand that. Black people should be in the Caribbean or Africa, that’s where they came from.’”
Ingrid Pollard for the Guardian, 2022.
Lenthall Road Workshop, Hackney
In the 1980s, Pollard became a member of the Lenthall Road Workshop in Hackney, a black women owned print workshop working with communities to educate in printmaking techniques and produce printed materials for protests and campaigns. Founded in 1975 by three women, Chia Moan, Viv Mullett and Jenny Smith, the workshop was all-women run on feminist principles of equal say and shared responsibilities. Their work was focussed on community and sought to engage local feminist collectives, anti-racist and LGBTQ+ rights groups. The workshop had close-knit connections to different feminist arts and activist groups and was a respected contributor to the women’s movement culture, resources and ambitions.
In an interview with the Guardian, Pollard highlights this as a defining moment for her as she started doing work with the feminist publications Spare Rib and Outskirts while also becoming active in the London Lesbian scene, initially a “white feminist world”, but then part of a Black lesbian breakaway group.
Black Lesbian poster was designed by Ingrid Pollard in 1984 and hand screen-printed at 80 Lenthall Road Workshop in Hackney. The poster, made in celebration of Britain’s first Black Lesbian Conference in 1985, features human rights activist Femi Otitoju and the words ‘Black Lesbian’ and ‘Lesbian’ in different languages.
Deny: Imagine: Attack: Silence 1991/2019
Four sets of silver photographic prints presenting images of Black queer bodies surrounded by homophobic statements, handwritten around the edges of the frames. When asked about the artistic choices, Pollard references a medical text by English eugenicist Ellis (1859) and notes “He’s looking at so called ‘inverts’. It’s the state language of psychology that is repeated whatever way you want to talk about this. Photography has always been implicated in medicine.” The fourth part, Silence, was added in 2019 to highlight the ongoing struggle for rights and visibility.
Written and researched by Marco Capicotto, MA Art Gallery & Museum Studies graduate and Whitworth volunteer.
References
Ghadiali, A. (2023, May 23). ‘People want me to say I’m alienated’: Ingrid Pollard on the myths of art, race and landscape. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/mar/20/ingrid-pollard-myths-art-race-landscape-photography-interview-mk-gallery
Ingrid Pollard Photography. http://www.ingridpollard.com/
V&A Museum. Black Lesbian | Ingrid Pollard | V&A Explore the collections. Victoria and Albert Museum: Explore the Collections. https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1275026/black-lesbian-poster-ingrid-pollard/
Young, L. (2023). Women in revolt!: Art and Activism in the UK 1970-90.
Queering The Whitworth 
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