Go Woman Go! is a collaboration between British artist Laura Aldridge and women in Abuja in Nigeria as part of UK/Nigeria season 2015-16. 

Aldridge travelled to Nigeria in September 2015 to participate in a series of workshops exploring ceramics, textile and printmaking traditions. At the Nike Centre for Art and Culture in Abuja Chief (Mrs) Nike Okundaye facilitated a textile design workshop with Aldridge and 35 women. The artist also met with female ceramicists in Giri, Abuja and designed ceramic vessels inspired by their work to be produced by the ceramicists.  

Go Woman Go! culminates in two public exhibitions in Abuja. The first takes the form of a building wrap of the Headquarters of Federal Ministry of Women Affairs & Social Development, Abuja with a unique pattern inspired by the textile workshop. The second exhibition is an installation of ceramic vessels produced by ceramicists in Giri in a gallery called House 33.

A limited edition artist's publication also accompanies the project.

Collection Artist(s)

Glossary

  • Ceramics

    Clay based products produced from non-metallic material and fired at high temperature. The term covers all objects made of fired clay, including earthenware, porcelain, stoneware and terra cotta.

  • Design

    The arrangement of elements or details in an artefact or a work of art.

  • Edition

    All copies of a book, print, portfolio, sculpture, etc., issued or produced at one time or from a single set of type. Printed works can be made in an edition of between one and many thousands of copies. With most printing techniques the plate or screen will become worn if very many prints are made, so to maintain quality (and exclusivity) editions of original prints are usually kept below one hundred copies and normally average between thirty and fifty copies. Prints made up of several different plates can be extremely complicated and time-consuming to edition, so in these cases editions are kept low for practical reasons. Sculptural editions are a set of cast sculptures taken from the same mould or master. These editions are usually much lower, consisting of no more than six casts. Though each cast in an edition might have a lower value than a unique piece, it may be a more effective way of offsetting costs of an expensive process such as bronze casting.

  • Film

    A transparent, flexible plastic material, usually of cellulose acetate or polyester, on which light-sensitive emulsion is coated, or on which an image can be formed by various transfer processes.

  • Installation

    An artwork comprised of many and various elements of miscellaneous materials (see mixed media), light and sound, which is conceived for and occupies an entire space, gallery or site. The viewer can often enter or walk around the installation. Installations may only exist as long as they are installed, but can be re-created in different sites. Installation art emerged in the 1960s out of Environmental Art (works of art which are three-dimensional environments), but it was not until the 1970s that the term came into common use and not until the late 1980s that artists started to specialise in this kind of work, creating a genre of ‘Installation Art’. The term can also be applied to the arrangement of selected art works in an exhibition.