Six Women - Art vapours

Six Women - Art Vapours is a visual/text essay referencing the five women filmed in conversation in the second episode of John Berger's Ways of Seeing (1972), and a sixth woman who appears in the Ways of Seeing archive belonging to its producer, MiKe Dibb, as the author of a letter from an apologetic ‘ordinary housewife’.

The visual/text essay is co-authored with Juliette Kristensen, developed from a paper co-presented at 'Thinking with John Berger', 4-5 September 2014, Cardiff Metropolitan University. The paper discussed a special issue of the Journal of Visual Culture published in 2012 (marking the 40th anniversary of Ways of Seeing), and introduced a related project, Art Vapours.

The journal issue was co-edited by Raiford Guins, Juliette Kristensen and susan pui san lok, and comprises eighteen short contributions and reflections from historians, theorists, writers, thinkers, curators and makers, from across the fields of art history, visual culture and practice. The issue also includes an interview by Kristensen with Mike Dibb (producer, filmmaker and collaborator on Ways of Seeing), and a selection of visual essays commissioned by lok. In addition, lok produced a visual response to Dibb’s personal archive, called ‘Making Ways’, under the rubric, ‘Archivery’.

Art Vapours is an occasional collaboration between lok and Kristensen.