Tuesday 1 July 2025, 7.30pm
TALKER #13 with Bobby Baker launches at Cafe OTO with a rare live performance from Bobby herself and a new work by Jessica Higgins.
Bobby Baker's acclaimed intersectional feminist practice includes performance, drawing, and installation, and persistently exposes the undervalued and stigmatised aspects of women’s daily lives, exemplified by pioneering works such as Drawing on a Mother’s Experience (1988) and Kitchen Show (1991), which was recently acquired by the Arts Council Collection. In 2019 a retrospective of Baker’s work featuring paintings, sketchbooks, storyboards and prints made between 1970 and 2019 was presented at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, curated by Clara Zarza. The exhibition, titled Tarros de Chutney, included the artist’s acclaimed Diary Drawings (1997–2008), and a selection of Timed Drawings made by Baker in 1984, when her children were small, shown for the first time.
Born in 1950 in Kent, UK, she graduated from Painting at St. Martins School of Art (1972, now Central St Martins) and holds an Honorary Doctorate from Queen Mary University London.
Performances, installations and exhibitions include An Edible Family in a Mobile Home (1976/2023) as part of Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970–1990 at the Whitworth, Manchester (2025); Burning Down the House: Rethinking Family, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (2024); Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, curated by Hettie Judah for Arnolfini, Bristol, MAC, Birmingham (2024), and Millennium Gallery, Sheffield (2024/2025); An Edible Family in a Mobile Home (1976/2023) as part of Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970–1990 at Tate Britain, London (2023/2024); EPIC DOMESTIC at The Tetley, Leeds as part of Leeds 2023 Year of Culture (2023); Great & Tiny War, Newcastle (2018); An Edible Family in a Mobile Home (1976), London; Drawing on a (Grand) Mother’s Experience, WOW-Women of the World Festival, London (2015); Kitchen Show (1991), London, Adelaide Festival and touring; How to Live, Barbican Centre, London (2004); Table Occasions 9–15, Münchner Künstlerhaus, Munich (1998); How to Shop, Chicago International Festival of Arts (1996); Cook Dems, Harbour Front Centre, Toronto (1992); and Box Story, Arnolfini, Bristol (2001). Selected solo exhibitions include Tarros de Chutney, La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2019); Art Supermarket and Perpetuity in Icing, ICA, London (1978); and Diary Drawings: ‘Mental Illness’ and Me 1997–2008, Wellcome Collection, London (touring exhibition) (2009).
A selection of Baker’s Timed Drawings (1984–1985) are on show at Dundee Contemporary Arts until 13 Jul 2025 as part of the Hayward Touring exhibition Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, curated by Hettie Judah.
Bobby Baker lives and works in London.
Jessica Higgins is an artist and writer ordinarily interested in the social body and its entanglement in cultural and organisational infrastructures. In particular she focusses on the form and question of performance through the material of the voice and modes of communication. She often works through the production of texts and speculative narratives, which are brought to bear in improvisational scenarios, collaborative workshopping and live or recorded recital. She has shown her work at, or as part of, Radiophrenia; Edinburgh Art Festival; Supernormal; Glasgow International Festival; David Dale Gallery; Castlefield Gallery; LUX Artist Moving Image Festival and Glasgow Film Festival. She also writes essays, fiction and poetry about other artists, music and films, and is one half of the band Guests.
https://jessicasusanhiggins.info/
TALKER is an interview zine about performance. Each issue features a long-form conversation with an artist who works in an innovative way with live practice. The first issue with Ian White was published in 2016. Since then it has profiled the artists Kate Valk, Richard Maxwell, Sue Tompkins, Dora García, Spalding Gray, Kathy Acker, Jo Fong, Paul Maheke, Clifford Owens, Gustav Metzger, Barby Asante, Miranda July and Agus Nur Amal PMTOH.
