Olivia Plender has been commissioned to make new work for The Bower as part of her on-going project ‘Many Maids Make Much Noise’ focusing on the symbolic idea of having a voice, making noise and the power of the collective to claim the right to speak and be heard in public.

The exhibition at The Bower comprises a sound installation and posters produced in collaboration with the London Centre for Book Arts and a new publication designed by Design Print Bind. The work takes its starting point from an unpublished play entitled ‘Liberty or Death’ (c.1913) by Sylvia Pankhurst about women’s activism in East London, the struggles to win better living and working conditions, as well as votes for women.

Plender has been working with women’s groups active in London today to explore the themes of the play including: housing, domestic violence, imprisonment, the welfare system and unequal pay. Extracts from the script were reanimated by the women who discuss similarities between their experiences and those of their predecessors. Their conversations form the basis of the sound installation and posters, highlighting the return of the poor conditions outlined in the play, as a consequence of the austerity policies instituted by the British government in the last decade, which have disproportionally affected women. Forced into unpaid care work, or struggling with a punitive benefits system, precarious housing conditions, racism and detention, the women turn to protest. The disproportionate experiences of police violence and intimidation that follow, demonstrates how threatened the authorities are by women who speak up. The networks of care and solidarity that they create, enable them to change their situations and challenge the status quo. These conversations took place prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Photography: Jonathan Bassett