July 22, 2024, by Sarah Colborne

Art and activism: Rosemary Wels

Visitors to the exhibition dear sisters: activists archives at Lakeside Arts can’t fail to have noticed the striking designs of the posters produced by the Nottingham Women’s Liberation Group. We speak to the woman behind these posters, flyers and magazine covers to find out more about her art and her activism and ask how she came to join the Women’s Liberation Movement.

Nottingham Women’s Liberation Group

Artist Rosemary Wels came to Nottingham in 1972 for her husband’s work, moving in to the high-rise Balloon Woods flats with a young baby to look after and no friends or family to help. She started including faces and figures in her previously empty landscapes, including the sad expressions on women’s faces, landscapes seen as by a housewife (through windows and doors). She even produced an artwork depicting the damp at Balloon Woods flats which she showed to council officials.

Without access to childcare, Rosemary was struggling to work as a teacher and artist, so she joined the Women’s Liberation Movement in Nottingham because of her interest in their Childcare Campaign. She can be seen holding one of her placards in front of the Nottingham Women’s Liberation Nurseries and Childcare Campaign banner in 1975

Rosemary Wels campaigning, from a photo by Mike Hamlin of the May Day protest march of 1975 (FME/2/1/)

Campaign materials

As well as attending meetings and demonstrations, Rosemary put her talents to use producing campaign material for the cause, such as posters and placards. We interviewed Rosemary in the Weston Gallery where she talked us through the process of producing some of the screenprinted posters which feature in the dear sisters exhibition.

Watch a short interview with Rosemary in which she talks about her screen printing

She also produced cover artwork and illustrations for four issues of ‘Women Now!’, the journal of the Nottingham Women’s Liberation Group (Feminist Publications Collection Periodicals HQ1600.NOT WOW). One of these was featured in the Tate Britain exhibition Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970–1990. 

She knew Shirley Cameron and was briefly involved with the Feminist Arts group, designing the cover for the performance edition of Feminist Arts News in 1980.

Digital copy of cover and back cover of Feminist Arts News, Summer 1980, by artist Rosemary Wels

Artwork

In an article for ‘Women Now!’ (1974 ‘The fight goes on for…’ pp. 7-8), Rosemary explained her hopes for second wave feminism:
 “I want women to be active, militant and confident – but to achieve anything alone one must be organised and determined; aggressive if necessary, in asserting one’s right to carry on one’s activities. It’s a struggle. However, although by individual effort women can alter their circumstances to a certain extent, it is only by working with other women to change society’s attitudes to women and the laws and the whole structure of society, that women can be truly liberated.”.

In this longer video, Rosemary goes on to talk about how her fine art work was strongly influenced by her feminist sympathies, her depictions of women, her exhibition at Nottingham Castle and the exhibition 10 Midlands Artists. She also reflects on her work for the Women’s Liberation Movement and the importance of their activism. 

Poster by Rosemary Wels with catalogue for Ten Midland Artists, 1974. FME/3/5/15 and UoNC

We were excited to discover a poster designed by Rosemary amongst a collection of University ephemera. The poster is for the exhibition 10 Midland Artists, University Art Gallery, Portland Building, from 11-19 July 1974.  The exhibition was arranged by the Nottingham Association of University Women, to coincide with a conference organised by the Nottingham Association for the British Federation of University Women. Exhibiting artists included Dorothie Field (founder member of the Midland Group of Artists), Evelyn Gibbs (who was evacuated to Nottingham University from Goldsmiths College and stayed on in Nottingham afterwards, also a founder member of the Midland Group of Artists), as well as Rosemary herself.

Later work

In 1976 Rosemary went into art and design education, lecturing at New College Nottingham for 27 years until 2003 when she went freelance, running courses including ‘Drawing with Confidence’ for the W.E.A. From the 1980s she has maintained a studio, showing her work in Opens, the NSA, London in 2014, Leicester Print Workshop and Tarpey. In 2017 she was involved in a collaboration with Meghan Gray, a University of Nottingham  astronomer, which resulted in her making a multi discipline piece for the Pint of Science Festival that year. Solo shows include: Nottingham Castle, Gallery Field, Nottingham Playhouse 1989, Erewash Museum 2001, NSA Drawing the Moon 2006 + Weatherworks 2009, and in 2019 ‘Seeing Through’ in the Wallner Gallery at Lakeside Arts.

Explore further

The video interviews with Rosemary will be added to the collection of 40 or so interviews in the Feminist Archive (East Midlands). They can be accessed, along with the rest of the archive, in the Manuscripts and Special Collections reading room at the King’s Meadow Campus of the University of Nottingham. If you missed Women in Revolt! at the Tate Britain, it is now on in Edinburgh (until 26 January 2025: National Galleries of Scotland website). The dear sisters exhibition is on at the Weston Gallery at Lakeside Arts until 1 September 2024.

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