Clare Bottomley
10th July 2025, 12.30pm-2.30pm
Clare Bottomley
About:
Clare Bottomley is an artist, educator, and early-career researcher based in Helsinki, Finland. She is a Doctoral Researcher at Aalto University, exploring re-enactment as a creative method for re-examining past representations in photography, research, and pedagogy. She also lectures at Falmouth University, UK, within the Institute of Photography. Her work has been exhibited across the UK, Finland and internationally, including the Hayward Gallery touring exhibition Act of Creation: Art and Motherhood, currently on display at Dundee Contemporary Arts, UK.
Session details:
Reframing the library as a feminist space
Clare facilitated a roundtable discussion exploring how growing a feminist library is not only about the materials it contains, but also about how we engage with those materials—and with each other—within the space. Rooted in Black and feminist thought, the session invited participants to rethink dominant notions of knowledge, research methodologies, and citational practices—challenging what is traditionally included or excluded, and asking why.
The discussion will questioned the authority of standardised academic rigour and the institutionalisation of knowledge, proposing instead the generative freedom found in undisciplining research practices. It will consider how spaces like libraries can act as sites of collective meaning-making and re-imagination.
Reframing the library as a feminist space, Clare advocated for the inclusion of alternative forms of research and citation—such as gossip, tarot, and performance—and interrogated why such methods have been historically disregarded.
*Funded by The Paul Mellon Centre
Images: © Grace Springer
