Join Lady Lever Art Gallery for this very special panel discussion, where guest speakers will explore ideas and themes around their exhibition Another View: Landscapes by Women Artists.
This discussion will use the exhibition as a ‘jumping off point’ for exploration around how women experience landscapes and the different factors at play, with each panel member brining their own unique perspective. The panel will include:
Dr Melissa Gustin – Chair
Melissa L Gustin is the Curator of British Art at National Museums Liverpool. She earned her PhD from the University of York, working on on women sculptors in 19th-century Rome, and has previously taught at the University of Essex and University of York. She has held fellowships at the Watts Gallery—Artists Village and Henry Moore Institute. She is writing a book on the Victorian painter G F Watts and art history, and has recently curated Another View: Landscapes by Women Artists at the Lady Lever Art Gallery.
Bushra Schuitemaker – Speaker
Bushra Schuitemaker is a devoted zoologist and environmental enthusiast, currently undertaking her PhD at the Quadram Institute Bioscience, focused on poultry welfare and agricultural sustainability. In addition to her studies, she was the former vice-chair (2020-23) of the British Ecological Society’s Racial & Ethnic Equality & Diversity (REED) Ecological Network, a supportive platform for under-represented & marginalised ethnicities. Connecting others to the great outdoors is her ultimate passion, and she is also a leader of Black Girls Hike UK.
Lucy Jones – Speaker
Lucy Jones is a british artist renowned for her raw, wild landscapes and distinctively provocative portraits, characterised by expressive abstract brushwork and vibrant colour, conducting a journey through both interior landscapes and the external world beyond.
“In one way I am restricted because I have cerebral palsy and cannot move through a landscape. But what I do is to kneel with my drawing board in front of me on the ground as I cannot stand. This has always given me a way to see and feel that I am physically part of the landscape. I explore the space and make, through drawing, a memory. Then, with my memory guide, I work on a canvas back in the studio to move the landscape into a painting. If I succeed, the painting has an autonomy separate from the landscape but still grounded in the place.”
Dr Morag Rose – Speaker
Morag Rose is a walking artist-activist-academic and a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at The University of Liverpool. In 2006 she founded Manchester based psychogeographical collective The LRM (The Loiterers Resistance Movement). The LRM manifesto states “Our city is wonderful and made for more than shopping. The streets belong to everyone and we want to reclaim them for play and revolutionary fun”. The LRM facilitates free, public communal wanders on the First Sunday of every month alongside Morag’s portfolio of performance tours and games such as CCTV Bingo. Morag’s research interests focus on public space, access, equality and extending the right to roam for all, radical histories and walking as an artistic, political and cultural practice. Morag is Chair of Our Irwell, a community organisation dedicated to protecting, progressing and promoting access to the river Irwell. She was a Co-Investigator on the Covid-19 rapid response project Walking Publics: Walking Arts (AHRC 2021-22) and is currently part of a research team imagining better futures of healthcare with and for people living with energy limiting chronic illnesses.
Dr Noreen Masud – Speaker
Noreen Masud is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bristol, and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker. Her academic monograph, Stevie Smith and the Aphorism: Hard Language (Oxford University Press, 2022) won the MSA First Book Award 2023 and the University English Prize 2024; her memoir-travelogue, A Flat Place (Hamish Hamilton [Penguin] and Melville House Press, 2023), was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2024 and the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Trust Young Writer of the Year Award 2024, and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2024.
