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Ketty La Rocca at the Estorick Collection : October 2025. Subassa and I visited this exhibition today at our local gallery in Highbury. Very unusual work, very 60s feminist oriented, collages, but nonetheless interesting.

A founding member of the avant-garde collective Gruppo 70, La Rocca merged art with poesia visiva (visual poetry), confronting the limitations of patriarchal language structures and advocating for alternative forms of expression. Her practice often centred on the human hand – an expressive tool for both gesture and communication – and expanded into striking sculptural works, including large-scale alphabetic forms in black PVC.

La Rocca’s work has garnered growing international acclaim in recent years; it has been featured in major exhibitions including the Venice Biennale and can be found in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Centre Pompidou and the Uffizi. Resonant and urgent, La Rocca’s work feels remarkably contemporary – interrogating consumer culture and gender dynamics with clarity and force.

Melanie Ley, https://www.culturecalling.com/london/events/ketty-la-rocca-you-you

Vintage Designs are offering a Bookbinding Bootcamp this month. The introduction is free and gives you 6 tutorials for making various bookworks. I made a chain stitch bound bookwork using a soft cover printed using monoprints and autumn leaves from the park. It’s really easy!

Here is the link to the bootcamp.

Please check out further bookworks in progress in the navigation menu above

Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse and Alice Adams : Abstract Erotic

In 1966 Lucy Lippard the art critic curated a ground-breaking exhibition Ecentric Abstraction in New York, which showcased a new approach to sculpture. This was distinct from the rigidly geometric forms previously created at that time. The sculpture produced a ‘sensuous response’ in the viewer. The materials comprised papier mache, plastic mesh, netting, chain-link fencing.

The Courtauld exhibition brings together the three women artists. Women artists at this time were not regularly shown in galleries or well-known. She said that at the time I can see now that I was looking for ‘feminist art‘

Whether this type of once new sculpture has any relevance today, is debateable. I had already seen previous works by Louise Bourgeois, far more impressive and ground-breaking. The room full of her sketches and drawings were very unimpressive and it is doubtful why they were included in the show.

All in all, my partner and I appreciated seeing these works, however, there are many women fibre and sculpture artists now. Next week we are going to Tate Modern to look at the permanent exhibitions.