Unbidden Tongues #7: Continuity Girl by Naomi Pearce

Description

Unbidden Tongues #7: Continuity Girl unpacks the ‘forensic feminist methodology’ developed by writer, curator and administrator Naomi Pearce. Informed by research conducted in various personal archives of women administrators of artist studio spaces in London from the 1970s until now, the components of Pearce’s writing span mortuary field notes, interview transcripts, intimate first-person accounts and an auto-fictive mystery novella. These various evidentiary approaches blend to form an unconventional casebook that puts forward the complicating factors underpinning the process of writing history in the first place. In this particular title, the biographical lens focuses on Shirley Read—a photographer, writer, teacher, administrator and oral historian, whose work has been largely overlooked, until now.

Since its beginnings in 2020, Unbidden Tongues has published previously produced work by cultural practitioners busy with questions surrounding civility and civic life—particularly in relation to language and its administration. Each title is printed in black-and-white and made with the intention to keep production efforts low, easily reproducible and financially sustainable, so as to contribute as effectively as possible to a wider circulation of the work. Unbidden Tongues is edited by Isabelle Sully and the series is designed by Matt Hinkley.