Feminist Art Workers, active 1976 – 1981

Performance art group that included Nancy Angelo, Candace Compton, Cheri Gaulke, Vanalyn Green, and Laurel Klick.

Feminist Art Workers (Nancy Angelo, Candace Compton, Cheri Gaulke, Vanalyne Green, and Laurel Klick) is a collaborative performance art group founded in 1976 at the Woman’s’ Building in Los Angeles. They created artwork that addressed a wide range of issues (women’s relationships, sexual violence, economic rights). Often bringing their work directly to a non-art audience, they pioneered new artistic strategies (tours, floats, phone calls and unconventional venues such as cafeterias, conferences, busses and planes). Those interested in the historical precedents of contemporary art practices such as collaboration, interactive performance, and community based art will discover roots in the work of Feminist Art Workers. Their work was featured in a Getty-sponsored Pacific Standard Time exhibition at Otis College of Art and Design in 2011, Doin’ It In Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building. The catalogue Feminist Art Workers: A History available at Amazon.com, brings together for the first time historic images, archival documents, personal recollections, and critical essays that illuminate the groundbreaking work of this early feminist art group.

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