Repost • @oliviaplender "I want to talk about how these 19th-century conditions have returned in the context of the UK today, with austerity measures and the rolling back of the welfare state, and how that impacts the body and mental health" I am the cover story in the current issue of Art Monthly, with an interview by the brilliant Laura Guy about my exhibition Our Bodies are Not the Problem at Maureen Paley, London until 30 October 2022. The front cover features a drawing of mine titled Arrest! (2021). ➖️➖️➖️➖️➖️➖️➖️➖️➖️➖️➖️➖️➖️➖️➖️ Our Bodies are Not the Problem, The Problem is Power was commissioned as part of the exhibition 'Life Support', curated by Caroline Gausden, Kirsten Lloyd, Nat Raha and Catherine Spencer at Glasgow Women's Library in 2021. Your contribution to the exhibition included discrete interventions within the interior of the library. How does the convergence of health and production that you describe affect the scale you work at? "My contribution to that exhibition was to redesign the community room at Glasgow Women's Library, which is the education space. At the time it was filled with furniture that wasn't very functional and it resembled the unloved back office of a local government building. My interventions were quite subtle. I changed the lighting, painted the walls a different colour, altered the seating and added carpets. Since the exhibition, I am glad to say that I have had updates from GWL that people really love spending time there. It feels good to be there if you are not feeling well, you are tired, or you've got a kid - you can also lie on the floor. It's a much more flexible space to accommodate differ ent kinds of bodies. Part of that comes out of my needs, what I would have liked when I started having health problems. GWL combines so many of my interests. They have an archive where I have been looking at incredi ble material relating to women's health activism and queer health activism, then there is the community work that they do, and it's an arts venue too. It's been a very interesting space to spend time, to really think through what art can do in an institution like that."