Good afternoon everyone,

Having now spent a Saturday in Margate (last Saturday) here is the long-awaited Fem Fri on the impressive women you might find out about if you go to Margate.

We start with Ingrid Pollard, who is from Guyana, and there's a major retro of her work at the Turner Contemporary which you should definitely make the trip to see if you can. A lot of her work is in photography and video, but it was her kinetic/sculptural work (pictured below) that I loved the most in that exhibition. She does talk about that but obviously my pullquote is her talking about rowing:

I used to row, and I was studying tango. I was doing both at the same time. They are very similar. You have to be super-aware – you’re listening with your body. If you go like this [tilts head] in the boat, it makes the boat go like that [indicates the other direction]. You have to cooperate with everybody: you’ve all got to be doing the same thing at the same time. The tango, it’s traditionally not a choreographed dance. […] The leader and the follower are doing different dances. The leader is saying, with a gesture, please come this way. And the follower doesn’t have to do that.

https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/ingrid-pollard-interview-carbon-slowly-turning-mk-gallery-milton-keynes-photography-since-1835

Now here is Margaret Bryan, early science educator and publisher of textbooks. There's not a lot about her on the internet (or what there is makes it clear that we don't know a lot about her) but as this post tells us she inspired a lot of people:

Mrs Bryan is an enlightened educator of some note, and introduces her female pupils to the wonders and principles of scientific enquiry and natural philosophy – all generally considered to be a male preserve in the 18th Century. In 1797, while living in Margate, she publishes a Compendious System of Astronomy, earning her a degree of fame. A year later, she moves her academy to Blackheath in London and publishes Lectures on Natural Philosophy (thirteen lectures on hydrostatics, optics, pneumatics, and acoustics) in 1806 and then in 1815, an Astronomical and Geographical Class Book for Schools.

https://www.margatecaves.co.uk/post/mrs-bryan

Love,

Alex.