We Also Fight Windmills
The Legacy of Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska
Curiously is delighted to present this dynamic collection of works by 27 artists and writers from seven countries, creatively responding to the literary photobook ‘I Also Fight Windmills’ by Ania Ready.
Originally showcased at the Fairway Gallery at Oxford University Press in April 2024, ‘We Also Fight Windmills’ has been re-curated by Mills Rowe to fit the unique ambience of Curiously.
This exhibition brings together a rich tapestry of photography, collage, embroidery and poetry, each piece a reflection on the life and work of the forgotten feminist writer Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska.
Playing on a loop inside Curiously as you view the show; Officium by Jan Garbarek and The Hilliard Ensemble is the perfect musical accompaniment to this exhibition.
The haunting sounds of the choral group are enhanced by the uplifting saxophone, providing a thoughtful backdrop to the images and poetry on display.
We invite you to listen to the album whilst exploring the show online.
Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska, a Polish-born author show lived between 1872 and 1925, spent her final days in a mental asylum in the UK. Her highly autobiographical story, reimagined through Ania Ready’s photobook, portrays the journey of a migrant woman from Eastern Europe travelling to Paris, New York, and London in pursuit of her dream to become a writer. Faced with societal barriers, poverty, and unfulfillment, Sophie’s struggle against a patriarchal society led to severe mental instability, marked by hysterical attacks and profound emotional turmoil.
Ania Ready, a Polish-British photographic artist based in Oxfordshire, UK, delves into the human psyche through her work, examining the impact of societal, medical, and political forces. Her photobook ‘I Also Fight Windmills’ was born out of a deep engagement with Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska’s texts, blending visual interpretation with literary narrative.
In creating the photobook, Ready accumulated an array of leftover materials - test prints, multiple printouts, and cutouts. Rather than storing these remnants, she decided to share them with other artists, inviting them to craft their own responses. Each artist received a unique envelope containing the test prints, excerpts of Sophie’s writing, cut-out materials, and a short biography of the writer. This sparked a global collaboration, leading to the creation of diverse visual and textual responses.
As you navigate through the exhibition, we hope you will find inspiration in the intricate dialogues between text and image, and between past and present. Copies of Ania Ready’s photobook ‘I Also Fight Windmills’ are available for purchase at Curiously, allowing you to further delve into the rich narrative that sparked this exhibition.
Thank you for joining us in celebrating the enduring spirt of artistic exploration and the power of collaborative creativity. Enjoy the exhibition.
Seeing Clearly by Madalina Androne
This piece is a contemplation on the complex affective, psychological, physical, societal struggles and the need to express them creatively.
Madalina Androne is an artist who uses photography to explore the themes of memory, identity, perception of space and time. Her recent work focuses on the human connection with nature, embracing alternative photography processes in installation format.
Szélmalomharc and Liberté by Viktoria Binges
Giclée prints
Inspired by Ania's moving portrayal of Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska and her excerpt from "To Your Dearest Memory" (xliii), my work echoes her struggle with metaphorical windmills, the psychological battle against societal barriers and grief. Aiming to set her free.
Viktoria Binges was born in Budapest, Hungary but lives and works in London. Her conceptual photography constructs narratives exploring societal dynamics and personal experiences while balancing a sensitive aesthetic. Recent projects have centred on miscarriage during lockdown, political misconduct in Hungary, and life-changing illness.
With her psychosocial studies background and training in therapeutic photography, her work profoundly explores the human psyche.
In Sophie’s Mind by Karen Block
”I have produced a series called “l’oiseau'“ which creates birds-eye views from unusual and abstract places. For this piece, I have taken an image from my 'l’oiseau series and have superimposed an image, which is a self-portrait taken with a fast shutter speed. This is my take of Sophie trapped with her demons inside her mind. The wild forest and the flowing hair form a fitting juxtaposition to the noise I am sure Sophie heard in her waking hours.”
Karen Block specialises in documentary and fine art photography. She obtained her BA in Photography at Westminster University, London. Karen works in 35mm film, medium format, digital and encaustic (wax layering). Her passion is working with people to create powerful and evocative images. Her work has captured the empowerment of women in India. Additionally, she has followed several families affected by the Chernobyl disaster in Belarus. Karen also works on fine art projects, covering identity, self-portraiture and gender empowerment.
Stitched photographs by Sarah Capel
Sarah’s stitched intervention into three of Ania Ready’s photographs speaks to the process of piecing together Sophie Gaudier’s-Brzeska’s archive that Ready has achieved through her work.
By using stitch in three different ways, Capel’s work not only draws attention to specific areas of the photographs, but alludes to the weaving together of Sophie’s archive material and Ready’s photographs create a new story in I Also Fight Windmills.
Sarah Capel is an artist and researcher whose practice includes printmaking and hand stitching. She also leads community embroidery works. Sarah’s work is concerned with the embodiment of women’s identities and memories in their creative work. Sarah is developing her practice through a PhD programme at Coventry University.
Memory, Mortality by Emma Davies
“This is my response to Ania’s retelling of Sophie’s story. My father died recently and I made these images during the short three weeks of his fatal illness, not wanting to include him but wanting to mark the moments nonetheless. The project explores my memories of him alongside a confrontation of the endpoint of remembrance. Sophie has Ania to keep her story alive; most of us will eventually be forgotten.”
Emma Davies is a photographic artist and independent researcher based near London. She explores the aesthetics of activism and the commodification of nature. A former capital-markets lawyer, she is particularly interested in realistic alternatives to late-stage capitalism. She holds an MA in photography (Falmouth, 2023) and MSc in psychology (Open University, 2015). She started the Women and the Photobook initiative which was shown as part of Photo Oxford in 2023.
CAPRICIOUS MINDS by Jonathan Dayman
In 1922, Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska was put into an asylum for severe antisocial behaviour. As Ania Ready relates, “…a diagnosis of bipolar disorder would be reasonably certain these days.” Bipolar disorder has a slightly less menacing resonance than ‘manic-depression’, but less enlightened people might still equate this condition with someone being ‘mad’.
I was diagnosed with a ‘mood disorder’ in 2018, and have been taking lithium medication since 2019, together with an anti-depressant to balance the ‘downer’ effect. This work, in its very early stages of development, aims to offer just one viewpoint about what a mood disorder means for the individual - a visualisation of how it feels.
Jonathan Dayman is an artist based in East of England. His practice is eclectic but generally centres on the land, rural and urban, and the impact that man has on it, often destructively: in other words, man’s work with the apparent absence of man. His prime interest is in storytelling through artisanal, hand-made photobooks.
Cartographies of Emotion: Broken and Fragility by Amanda Denny
Cartographies of Emotion is a new work in progress that began in 2023. The project considers the mental and physical process of mapping through emotions of the mind and physical spaces whether domestic or outside of the home, and engages with the gender of these spaces.
The image ‘Broken’ reflects on family dysfunction where false interpretations can come from domineering cognitive prejudices, personal histories and the infallibility of memory. It reflects on miscommunication, being rendered voiceless and the trauma of managing circumstances that are imposed upon you by others. Accidents happen, sadness ensues from many previous sparkling moments.
Amanda Denny is a visual storyteller. Her practice creates new narrative forms through the interplay of image, literature and archival material. Memory as archive and chance circumstances, often start her projects which explore issues of our mental spaces, including resilience, trauma and marginalisation. Amanda believes that stories help you navigate through the world and are a place to question our cognitive biases. The narratives offered to the viewer through her work are intentionally fluid.
The Lightkeeper’s Mirror by Caitriona Dunnett
I was drawn to the age marks, on the mirror’s surface, in the Lightkeeper’s Dwelling House off the south west of Ireland, on a cold, wet, August morning. Built in 1910 on Valentia Island. A central living room lamp highlights all the mirror’s imperfections.
How many people looked into it, what were their thoughts and feelings, as they brushed their hair, fixed their make-up, adjusted a tie? What number of intimate scenes were caught in its frame between husband and wife, mother and daughter, and sisters? The last family moved out in 1947 when the lighthouse was automated.
Caitriona Dunnett is an Irish artist based in the UK. Her practice explores memory and the traces people leave behind. Dunnett has a BA in Photography and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally by PhotoIreland and Parthian Books.
Photographs by Francesco Falciani
This project explores the connection between a mental asylum and a prison in the city of Turin, in Northern Italy. Established in the second part of the nineteenth century, they both were influenced by the ideology of the anthropologist Cesare Lombroso. He pathologized anarchic political beliefs to mental deficiencies and disorders hence providing a justification for detaining political dissidents in mental institutions and eventually in jails.
The pictures selected for this exhibition convey a shared sense of oppression and desolation and provide the background for specific stories that will develop as the project matures.
Francesco Falciani is a photographer based in Birmingham with an interest in social and documentary photography. His work has been exhibited in several venues in Liverpool and at the Old Print Works in Birmingham.
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Memory Excavation, 2024 by Laurence Harding
Fibre-based darkroom print
Laurence Harding is a photographic artist who lives in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. She graduated from a BA in Photography in 2013 from the University of Westminster and studied for a further two years on the Southend based Alternative Master’s degree, The Other MA.
Throughout her art practice, she not only explores and challenges the nature of the photographic portrait, but also investigates the material qualities of the analogue medium. Her work has been exhibited in London, Brighton, Ipswich, Flatford and Southend.
Clouds by Irmgard Hueppe
Irmgard’s work combines a short poem called ‘Clouds’ with photos from her photographic wanderings. The poem is in response to a quote from Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska (“Nothing - nothing - nothing - The whole world - all the nasty people - triumph over me - all the unimaginable disasters pile up on my head fire.”)
Irmgard Hueppe has been taking photographs since childhood and hasn’t ceased to record the visual world around her. One of her pastures includes the Cowley Road, Oxford, which used to have a colourful annual Cowley Road Carnival every July (before COVID). A collection of her carnival photos was exhibited in the Old Fire Station, Oxford, in 2016.
Photographs by Lisa Kalloo
“Exploring experimental photography as a medium enables me to better express the language of my world.”
This pretty much sums up Lisa’s approach to photography. She often uses ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) in her work, as well as pin-hole, refraction and defraction, and tilt lenses. She secretly likes to break the rules, including the rules of photography. She works both in analogue and digital and frequently strays into abstract expressionism. She often creates her images in response to poetry and she regularly contributes to a poetry-in-translation-and-photography blog ‘Poetry Travels’.
Lisa Kalloo is a fine art photographer with multi-discipline experience in magazines, book covers, events and traditional photography. She has exhibited her work London, Ramsgate, Broadstairs and Germany. She also worked in Venice and Romania. She was highly commended by Ambit Magazine. She’s published Café by Wren’s St James-in-the-Fields, Lunchtime with Anna Blasiak’s poetry.
From under the apple trees he wrote to me by Mich Maroney
The drawing is made using a piece of text; “from under the apple trees he wrote to me”, in response to Ania Ready’s image of a woman standing alone in the dark under the trees. The text was inspired by Henri’s diary from World War One. There is a poignant entry written in France whilst he was at rest under apples trees in an orchard. He writes how happy he is. He died soon after, leaving Sophie bereft. Though the words are not Sophie’s I wanted the drawing to reflect the slightly obsessional way that she writes.
Mich Maroney is an Eurasian/British artist and writer who lives and works in Skibbereen, Ireland. Though she was born in Hong Kong she spent most her of her adult life in London. Mich is the publisher of a new Irish journal, SWERVE, that seeks to promote emerging visual artists and writers.
Faces Figure Immersion by Lu Mazen
A reflection on life in distress - based on the story of the Polish writer Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska. Under street be it emigration, personal loss or financial problems, the psyche moves into the red zone, until it reaches overload and eventually collapses. This is a gradual process; physical or mental symptoms can occur such as depression or dissolution of the personality. The photos visualise this process.
Lu Mazen’s art incorporates themes of place and environment, identity and memory, expressed through photography. After international studies (MPhil, St Andrews), she has exhibited at international art festivals, institutions and galleries. She won prizes such as Px3, Arte Laguna, Lynx and South West German Prize. Her hand-made book “False Moons” was a finalist at 9th Rendez-Vous-Images festival in France. She published in magazines, newspaper and books and did artist residencies at SVA, NY and Despatch, UK. She is a member of Work Show Grow, UK.
Seeking Eudaimonia by Etain O’Carroll
This self-portrait forms part of a series contemplating midlife malaise, the questioning of identity and the need to break free from a rut of expectation. It explores potential routes to transformation, our many possible selves and the elusive and often complex process of reasserting identity in midlife, especially as a mother.
Building on work with intentional camera movement and multiple exposures, I began a quest to find a medium that could evince the loss of identity I felt in midlife and the fugitive moments of clarity that briefly revealed a path forward.
Etain O’Carroll is a fine art photographer based in Oxford, exploring alternative techniques and processes to represent the world not necessarily as it appears, but as we perceive it. She holds an MFA from Oxford Brookes University and has previously studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and the Technological University in Dublin. She has exhibitied her work in the UK, Ireland, and in the USA, and in Brussels as part of the Cultural Programme of the Irish Presidency of the EU.
Photographs by Paulina Poświata
A piece of paper and a pen. Just as Sophie wrote. This is how I want to start writing about the presence of Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska in my life. About an enigmatic presence, difficult to grasp, explain, and yet real, occupying thoughts, evoking emotions.
I got to know Sophie in stages. The first was purely extrinsic. Dates, names, trips, titles, names. The next stage was more emotional. I began to hear her stories with more attention. As I talked and thought about her I felt sadness, sorrow, anger, discord, lack of understanding, powerlessness. This mixture caused anxiety, and I needed distance to get used to the new knowledge.
I took Sophie with me to the hospital. She was with. me while my health suddenly became fragile and threatened. Fearing for my life, I thought about how Sophie felt when she was hospitalised herself. Did she talk to anyone? Did someone visit her? Did she receive a letter from someone? Could she read at the time? Did her thoughts run wildly between a torn heart longing for Henri, and a family that had failed and betrayed her? Was someone fighting herself? When did she give up?
Paulina Poświata is a physiotherapist by profession and a traveller at heart. Taking pictures enables her to notice and dig into different perspectives, remember about other points of view and… change them sometimes.
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Hesitating by Ania Ready
This photograph printed on fabric comes from I Also Fight Windmills series which visually interprets literary texts of a largely forgotten, modernist writer of Polish origin, Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska. I wanted to freeze in time that moment of hesitation or uncertainty, when a decision about something in the future is being formed and expressed.
Ania Ready is a Polish-British photographic artist based in Oxfordshire, UK. She works with photography, archives, and texts. She explores the human psyche, and how it can be affected by outside forces: societal, medical, and political ones.
Ready 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 and madness. Ania has exhibited her work internationally in group and solo shows in England, Scotland, Poland, Latvia, Italy, Switzerland, Canada and New Zealand. Last year she published her first photobook I Also Fight Windmills.
Flying & Falling & (2024) by Ania Rolińska
I was dancing on a beach; an act of resistance & liberation, an embodiment of the self-discovery journey I had embarked on, not without ‘new calamities’ as Sophie observed. & serendipitously, my tripod collapsed, akin to Sophie’s watch breaking down? The camera - mid-flight - still registered my swirling silhouette, flattening it against the well-trodden sand.
So am I falling? Or am I flying? Or maybe I am doing both: flying & falling &? Do these optics have to compete and exclude each other or could they live alongside one another?
Ania Rolińska is a lens-based artist who combines photography with other media and uses alternative processes to turn her digital images into tangible artefacts. Her introspective self-portraits from experimental movement sessions explore feminine empowerment, embodiment, and deep self awakening among other things.
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“…a man had the audacity to compliment me on my beauty…” by Mills Rowe
Titled after Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska’s words… “a man had the audacity to compliment me on my beauty…” this mixed-media collage delves into the complex interplay of the male gaze, beauty standards, and societal expectations imposed on women.
Utilising found images, it challenges viewers to contemplate the pervasive pressure on women to conform to notions of prettiness.
From afar, this piece presents unified images, but upon closer inspection, reveals a juxtaposition of faces, prompting reflection on the subjective nature of beauty. Through this exploration, it questions the disparity in expectations between genders and the inherent societal constructs at play.
Mills Rowe, a self-taught London-born artist, explores human connection and community through her socially-engaged, multidisciplinary work. Exhibited across the USA and UK, she is currently based in Northumberland, working on the lost history of her female ancestors.
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Untitled, 2023 by Julie Sleaford
Both images are silver gelatin prints with zokin-gake.
The way many horses are treated runs very close to the way women have been controlled by society and idealised in imagery.
They are chosen, groomed, and trained to present the perfect image of equine beauty and performance. They are often confined in stables and fed high energy grains with restricted roughage. Unable to graze, socialise and express their true natures in a field they are disciplined to behave in a respectful manner and worked to enhance their physical performance.
This unnatural lifestyle can cause mental and physical stress. Some horses develop stereotypical behaviours such as cribbing and wind-sucking whereby they grab hold of surfaces with their teeth and suck in air to release mood enhancing hormones and saliva to soothe stomach ulcers.
Julie Sleaford is a British visual artist who works with analogue photography, moving image and drawing to explore the complexity of our relationship with horses. Her self-published book ‘The Problem Horse & Other Stories’ was acquired by The Bodleian and Victoria & Albert Museum Libraries.
A Warning For Lunatics by Monika Sosnowski
My contribution strives to evoke the transient and unfinished aspects of Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska’s literary output.
Monika Sosnowski is a Polish-American visual artist based in New York. Working primarily in the tradition of straight photography she contemplates the nature of being in time and place. She has been a Visiting Artist at Bennington College in Bennington, VT and at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY. She exhibited widely in the USA.
For Fun’s Sake by Mary Beth Willis
For Fun’s Sake was taken on January 1st, 2024 with an old Rolleiflex camera from an Oxfam shop. I am an artist and mother having fun with an old analogue camera. With each click of the shutter our children see their mother not only providing fun but having fun too.
The best gift I can give our children is seeing a woman creating a life of her own one frame at a time, however imperfect. Fun is a choice many women in the past have not had and still don’t have today. So if you are able, for fun’s sake, go play.
Mary Beth Willis is a cross pollinator, artist and observer who explores the world with a camera in one hand and a pen in the other. She has a penchant for haunting used book shops wherever she lands and lives in Oxfordshire with husband and two daughters.
voraciously myself, 2024 by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
voraciously myself is a poem in three sections on vintage book pages (erasure of Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska’s manuscript pages and collage)
incongruously, 2024 by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
This is a photomontage on a vintage book cover: 2 cut-up photographic prints by Ania Ready; homemade chalk ink (ground chalk piece collected sustainably under Møn’s Cliff, Baltic seawater, gum Arabic) on Daler & Rowney Papier Noir (150gsm); homemade acorn caps ink (acorn caps collected in Kraków, Poland) on vintage book page; expressive calligraphy (pathlong/pathwise/pathunwise)
Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese is a multilingual poet, literary translator, academic, accredited coach and runs ‘Transreading’ courses on hybrid poetries for the Poetry School, London. Her site-specific works use analogue processes as botanical inkmaking, cyanotype, pinhole photography, expressive handwriting and bookmaking. Based in Copenhagen, she is a ‘creative ambassador’ for the Møn UNESCO Biosphere.
These poems and texts have been produced as part of Women In Art Workshops facilitated by Ruthie Collins in Norwich. Inspired by the collaboration pack provided by Ania Ready, the group examined women in art from across the world in major collections, as well as literature by writers in response to art.
They discussed the power of the lens through which women see themselves and are seen; modern day re-imaginings of muses, as seen in work by artists such as Mickalene Thomas and poets such as Carol Anne Duffy and Jackie Kay, researched matrilineal creative heritage and spaces for women’s art like the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmith’s University.
You Don’t Need a Manifesto to Begin by Ruthie Collins
Ruthie Collins is a feature writer, writer and educator who also fuses her writing with public and participatory arts and ecology. Her work has been commissioned by Norfolk County Council, RSPB, National Centre for Writing, Cambridge University Museums and many more.
She worked as an arts columnist for several years and produced a range of publicly funded arts festivals and socially inclusive feminist arts projects featuring some of the UK’s leading feminist artists. Over the years she’s facilitated women’s writing days and courses partnered with Waterstones, Cambridge and worked as deputy editor and lead feature writer on a women’s international magazine. She runs Women In Art creative workshops open to all genders, to inspire visibility and exploration of women in art.
Follow Ruthie on X | Visit Ruthie’s Website
Gehrett Ellis is a freelance writer based in Norwich. He has published articles on Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Andre Gidé and Mircea Eliade.
Sue Saunders is a writer and mental health support worker, living in Norwich. She used to work in council run art galleries in London and would love to have been part of the Pre-Raphaelite sisterhood. Had there been one. ‘21:45’ is her working class take on ‘The Catcher in the Rye’.
She obtained a Free Read from the Arts Council/National Centre for Writing for her second book, ‘20 Minutes til Hometime’ and is currently submitting to literary agents.
If they had ruled their worlds, 2024 by Teresa Smith
“If they had ruled their worlds’ was written in response to the life of Sophie Brzeska. Most of the words in the list in my poem were drawn directly from descriptions I have read of Brzeska - words that journalists, historians and contemporary writers have used to try to shed light on her character and her life. Some words stem from Brzeska herself. There was a multitude of other words that could have been included.
This list of labels, that mostly others have given to her, is intended to question the perceptions that we all hold of each other and the narratives that are told of us all by other individuals, drawing attention to the way that labels and descriptions usually fall short of telling the whole story about a person.
