From the Archive: Bea Nettles

From the Collection Wall

Artist and educator Bea Nettles is best known for her innovations in alternative photographic processes and artist’s book works during the experimental ferment of the 1970s and 1980s, which place her among the medium’s most influential figures. Incorporating domestic craft and layered elements with her images, she has used a range of techniques and materials including handwriting, re-photographed snapshots, toy camera images, painting, and bricolaged fabric, thread and plastic. Nettles is also a pioneer of DIY self-publishing and distribution, tenaciously seeking an audience outside the mainstream art world.

Much of Nettles’ photography chronicles key stages in the lives of women, often through self-portraiture and the universalization of her own identity. Addressing family relationships and bodily experience, together with elements of mythology and natural science, Nettles’ work has become a touchstone in the history of feminist art. The selection here features early works and publications, each exemplifying the synthesis of experimentation and personal insight that has made her contribution to the medium so critical.

Paul Roth, IMC Director
Natalie Spagnol, Assistant Curator 

From the Collection is a rotating display highlighting works from the Ryerson Image Centre’s permanent collection.