++++ Katy Deepwell is founder and commissioning editor of n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal. She is currently Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Ulster. Her most recent book is 'Dialogues: Women Artists from Ireland' (Kinsale: Gandon Books, 2001); 'Women Artists and Modernism' (ed.) (Manchester Univ. Press, 1998); 'Art Criticism and Africa' (ed.) (London, Saffron/EAP, 1997); 'New Feminist Art Criticism' (ed.) (Manchester Univ Press, 1995).

++++ FEMINISM IN AN INTERNATIONAL FRAME / This presentation will examine the relationship between the art history of feminist art and the women’s art movement, which have often been national in character, and will contrast this with a number of international initiatives in feminist exhibitions since the 1970s. The feminist art movement in America has been the most well-documented part of the movement to date and has become dominant in terms of a published account of what feminism is. However, examination of international feminist exhibitions reveals a different agenda at work and a very different account of feminism’s significance as a contemporary art movement. The limited published knowledge about feminism in the visual arts has created some very specific problems and distortions for identifying feminism in the visual arts as an international phenomenon and an art movement with a global reach and multi-layered histories of exchange and co-operation across borders. The tensions between these two positions - one national/local, the other international/global - will be explored in relation to the work of women artists since the 1970s.