Dykeland

Dykeland presents a body of work created by the artist Sarah-Joy Ford, that investigates the history of dyke and lesbian lands in the UK through drawing, installation and textile practice. These works are an archive of an exploration in dyke, lesbian and queer relationships to land, placemaking, rurality and ecological activism. Dykeland is an intergenerational and interdisciplinary love letter to the relationship between dyke poetry and dyke visual art, and how we make space for ourselves.

Dykeland brings together archival, and new works by Ford. Early quilts, and silk scarves from her first solo show, archives and amazons, at HOME Manchester in 2020 are hung alongside two tufted artworks created with the support the artist Alena Ruth Doneley in 2022 during a DYCP project shown at Hare, at Bobinska Brownlee Gallery. And a new series  of multidisciplinary works created in response to Jane Cambell’s forthcoming, unpublished poetry collection: Dykeland and other secret islands, that intimately chronicles her experiences living on a dykeland for nearly 25 years.

This exhibition is in resistance to the rampant censorship of the word dyke.

It is a raising up of everything that, that word means to us; politics, community, resistance.

We are women loving women.

It is a rallying cry against the censorship of LGBTQ+ communities, particularly queer women.

It is an act of resistance against lazy tokenism, flame fanning of the so-called culture wars and the rise of facism here at home, and the wider world.

It is a grateful thank you note to the fierce women who have built separatist spaces for us to retreat into, take care of ourselves, until we are ready again to step back out, and fight.

It is a love letter to my dyke community, who fought to build a world in which I could survive, and sometimes thrive.