Feminist Library: Guest speakers - Eleanor Whiteman & Klara Sroka

Ffotogallery launched the Feminist Library last October 2024 during Ffoto Cymru, our International Photography Festival and it was a great success.

The Feminist Library is a space to listen, learn and discuss ideas.

These events are open to the public, free to attend and will be hosted monthly from July - December.

Eleanor Whiteman & Klara `Sroka session details:

‘Know Your Place’

At the beginning of the 19th century, Cyfarthfa Ironworks, owned by the Crawshay family was the largest in the world, and this year we are celebrating the bicentennial of the Crawshay’s home, Cyfarthfa Castle Museum and Art Gallery. ‘Know Your Place’, is a new art exhibition which has been developed to not only showcase this milestone, but to continue the vital discourse of nurturing contemporary Welsh Portraiture practice. The museum holds over 2,500 items of art within their collection, including a major selection of male portraits, in particular the Crawshay Iron Masters, engineers, musical conductors and distinguished gentlemen. This project aims to re-balance female representation within the collection and to use this as a dialogue to reinterpret historical narratives of industrial wealth in Merthyr Tydfil, and to platform women’s role within the home, work and society.

About Eleanor Whiteman:

Commissioned artist of Know your Place project

Eleanor is an artist currently based in South Wales. Her practice encompasses painting, print and photography. She graduated from Southampton University with a Degree in Geology, and this has deepened her relationship with the landscape and as a result, themes such as layers and deep time are recurrent throughout her practice. Our Industrial Heritage and how this has shaped both our landscape and its people is inextricably linked to the land upon which we live and so is of particular interest to her. Using a variety of traditional and contemporary photographic methods, Eleanor will be working with the collection at Cyfarthfa in order to make site specific work that will hope to challenge the traditional constraints of the portrait.

About Klara Sroka:

Klara Sroka MA – Curator of Know Your Place project, Arts and Exhibitions Coordinator at Cyfarthfa Castle Museum and Art Gallery.

Between 2021-2024 Klara successfully produced the Valleys Re-Told project for Amgueddfa Cymru where she directed her socially engaged art practice around solution focused outcomes that enabled community groups and schools to access and interpret the national art collection, producing various exhibitions and public events across the South Wales Valleys. This body of work was exhibited and curated by Klara in collaboration with the communities as part of The Valleys exhibition at Amgueddfa Cymru, Cardiff May 2024- Jan 2025.

In 2022 Klara was a co-director for a funded experimental project that developed creative processes for mathematicians in becoming curriculum makers for climate justice with Bristol University and Brigstow Institute.

Klara graduated with a Distinction in her MFA 2021 and was nominated for Student Artist of the year by CASW. She was selected to exhibit for Portal 2021 at Llantarnam Grange Art Centre and has shown in various group shows across South Wales. Klara is also a member of the On Your Face LGBTQIA art collective.

In 2019-2020 Klara co-developed with Charlotte Church the Awen project, a free to attend democratic community in The Vale of Glamorgan.

Upcoming confirmed list of speakers and dates for the Feminist Library sessions:

03rd September: Dr Durre Shahwar (12.30 - 2.30pm)

08th October: Eleanor Whiteman and Klara Sroka (12.30-2.30pm)

15th October: Dr Marianne Mulvey & Grace Gelder (3.00-5.00pm)

19th November: Chrisyl Wong-Hang-Sun (12.30 - 2.30pm)