Spurring the Witch Rachel Burge Rachel Burge, a woman accused of being a witch, faced a gruesome fate in the 17th century. With accusations of practicing witchcraft, she became the target of a spurring campaign. This brutal method involved forcing a sharp object into her skin, causing severe pain and leaving visible marks. The main idea behind spurring Rachel Burge was to extract a confession or to prove her guilt. The belief was that a witch's body would not react to pain in the same way as a normal person. If she did not show signs of agony or if her wounds miraculously healed quickly, it was seen as evidence of her witchcraft.
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Feminism arises at the end of declining civilizations and is seen as a luxury mindset, as women heavily rely on the infrastructure and advancements built by men. Following a similar process, the workshop was split into two sections the first with presentations from the organisers and the artists Marysia Lewandowska and Rehana Zaman, giving context to the session, including a series of responses to the questions raised by Nicolson in the original recordings.
If she did not show signs of agony or if her wounds miraculously healed quickly, it was seen as evidence of her witchcraft. Spurring was not a legal method of extracting a confession but rather a form of torture used to amplify fear and intimidation. The accused witch would be tied to a chair or table, rendering her immobile and vulnerable to the torturer's actions.
Group Work: Contemporary Art and Feminism
Group Work: Contemporary Art and Feminism explores the legacies and histories of group work in art since the 1970s, with a focus on feminist practices. This research project asks what would a (feminist) art history look like if it refused to tell a history of individual artists? And how did the collectivity inherent in much feminist organising in the 1970s and 1980s feed into artistic practice? Thinking through the legacies of consciousness-raising in art, as well as other political group work that intersect with feminist politics, including the peace movement, anti-racist and women of colour activism, and lesbian, gay and transgender activism, Group Work has run seminars and workshops since 2019. Further details can be found here.
The group is led by Dr Catherine Grant (Reader and Vice-Dean for Education, Courtauld Institute of Art), Dr Amy Tobin (Associate Professor in the History of Art, University of Cambridge and Curator, Contemporary Projects, Kettle’s Yard) and Dr Rachel Warriner (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Courtauld Institute of Art).
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- Art and Conservation of the Buddhist World
- Morgan Stanley Lates at Somerset House with The Courtauld
- The Asymmetry Distinguished Lecture Series on Contemporary Chinese and Sinophone Art
- Events recordings – Spring 2022
- Events recordings – Summer Semester 2022
- Event recordings – Autumn semester 2022/23
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- Art and Health
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- Courtauld Study Day
Charcoal and Chiaroscuro: Frank Auerbach’s Graphic Portraits and Post-war Culture - Call For Papers: Intersections: Entanglements with Medieval and Renaissance Textiles, 1100-1550.
- CFP: Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics
- Call for Papers: A One-day Colloquium on the Cloisters Cross
- Call for Papers: The Itinerant Shrine: Art, History, and the Multiple Geographies of the Holy House of Loreto
- American Art Archives in Britain
- The Ashcan School and Camden Town Group Comparative Project
- Decolonising Action Groups at The Courtauld
- The National Wall Paintings Survey
- Energies of Attachment: Rethinking Intimacy in Contemporary Chinese and Sinophone Art
- Group Work: Contemporary Art and Feminism
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- Gender and Sexuality Group
- ‘I ride a figurative horse into abstraction’: Harry Dodge’s Consent-not-to-be-a-single-being series
- Gendered Readings of the Earliest Women’s Suffrage Iconoclasm
- (Dis)Embodying the biomolecular sex: The lapse of identity in Jes Fan’s hormone works (2017 – 2018)
- Sex/Gender/Work: Samak Kosem’s Chiang Mai Ethnography (2017-present)
- Eros, Thanatos, and the Throuple: Alfred Gilbert’s Mors Janua Vitae (1908)
- Renaissance Events
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- State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious, Isabell Lorey, 2015
- Enrichment: A Critique of Commodities, Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre, 2020
- Creators in the get-rich economy: An ‘In Conversation’ with Arnaud Esquerre, Prof Sarah Wilson and Harry Woodlock
- Render visible: on wellness and free markets with Ed Fornieles
- Staying open: Rózsa Farkas on space in the reality of coronavirus
- Live Call, Lydia Ourahmane, 2019
- Faint with Light: Marianna Simnett in conversation with Sarah Wilson
- The Burnout Society, Byung-Chul Han, 2015
- Expiration: the last breath, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, 2018
- A State of Vital Exhaustion, Harry Woodlock, 2020
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- Events recordings – Summer semester 2023
- Events recordings – Autumn semester 2023
- Immediations Postgraduate Journal
- About Immediations
- Immediations Online
- Archive 2010 – 2015
- Imagining The Apocalypse: Art And The End Times
- Towards an Art History of the Parish Church, 1200–1399
- Towards an Art History of the Parish Church, 1200–1399
- Revival: Memories, Identities, Utopias
- Revisiting the Monument: Fifty Years Since Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture
- Picturing the Netherlandish Canon
- Ruskin’s Ecologies: Figures of Relation from Modern Painters to The Storm-Cloud
- Modernist Games: Cézanne and his Card Players
- Collaboration and its (Dis)Contents: Art, Architecture, and Photography since 1950
- Gothic Ivory Sculpture: Content and Context
- Gothic Architecture in Spain: Invention and Imitation
- Continuous Page: Scrolls and Scrolling from Papyrus to Hypertext
- A Reader in East-Central-European Modernism 1918–1956
2022
Group Work and Chelsea Space are pleased to announce that the publication Responding to Women and Creativity is now available as a pdf and a risograph pamphlet. Responding to Women and Creativity starts with Annabel Nicolson’s work Women and Creativity (1978-80), and compiles responses given to a series of questions about creativity from a number of contemporary artists, writers and curators. The research into Nicolson’s work was the subject of a Group Work workshop at Chelsea Space in March 2021.
Responding to Women and Creativity includes a facsimile copy of Annabel Nicolson’s article “Women Talking”, first published in Feminist Arts News (FAN) in 1982. There is an introduction to the project by Catherine Grant, and a series of responses to the following questions:
What helps your creative work?
What hinders your creative work?
When you read the extracts from Annabel Nicolson’s tapes in the article “Women Talking”, do you see similarities with your own situation in 2021?
Do you think it is still important for women artists and other feminist cultural practitioners to share their strategies for enabling creative practice?
Some of Annabel Nicolson’s respondents discussed whether they needed isolation to work, is this important to you?
Many thanks to those who responded: Louise Ashcroft, Beth Bramich, Lauren Craig, Amy Dickson, Oriana Fox, Melissa Gordon, Catherine Grant, Faye Green, Deniz Johns, Abbe Leigh Fletcher, Helena Reckitt, Selina Robertson and Rachel Warriner.
Copies of the risograph pamphlet are available from Chelsea Space shop
Copies will also be held at the Women’s Art Library, Special Collections, Goldsmiths Library, free whilst stocks last.
2021
A workshop organised by Catherine Grant, Amy Tobin and Rachel Warriner from the Group Work: Contemporary Art and Feminism research network, hosted by Chelsea Space on Thursday 25th March, 2021.
In response to the archival traces of Annabel Nicolson’s “Women and Creativity” tapes (1978-80), the workshop considered the relevance of these recordings for feminist art and writing today. Made by Nicolson in the late 1970s, the tapes document a series of interviews made by women artists, asking them what helped and hindered their creative practice. The recordings were then played in listening sessions, with Nicolson presenting extracts to small audiences.
Following a similar process, the workshop was split into two sections — the first with presentations from the organisers and the artists Marysia Lewandowska and Rehana Zaman, giving context to the session, including a series of responses to the questions raised by Nicolson in the original recordings.
The second section invited all workshop participants to respond to the questions around women and creativity from their own perspective, with time to work in small groups, and share ideas and experiences.
This workshop was supported by the Association for Art History and Chelsea Space. Dialogues is a programme of events, talks and screenings that will take place online during 2021, as we navigate the altered world around us. Devised in collaboration between Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Spaces, Dialogues will be hosted remotely and connected via Chelsea Space and UAL platforms.
2020
Feminist Curating and Group Exhibitions workshop – 26 June 2020
Groupwork produced three videos with curators Abi Shapiro, Karen Di Franco & Irene Revell and Irene Aristizábal, and Rosie Cooper & Cédric Fauq, in which they discuss the group exhibitions they have worked on.
You can watch these videos on the Group Work Youtube channel
2021
Group Work in the Women’s Art Library – Friday March 6th 2020
We are happy to share the audio of the presentations from this workshop. This workshop was led by Althea Greenan, curator of the Women’s Art Library, along with Lauren Craig and Gina Nembhard. As members of X Marks the Spot, an art and archive research collective, Craig and Nembhard have explored the Women of Colour Index held at the Women’s Art Library, as well as the Jo Spence archive.
Workshop members examined material in the Women’s Art Library and considered how archivists, artists and activists have sought to creatively engage with the collection. The workshop explored questions around how to approach collaborative practice through its archival traces.
The Women’s Art Library is a unique collection of material on women artists, with a growing programme of creative interventions by artists, curators, writers and archivists. It is held in the Special Collections, Goldsmiths Library, Lewisham Way, New Cross, London, SE14 6NW. This workshop was funded by the Association for Art History, the British Art Network and Goldsmiths Art Department Research Support Award. It was organised by Catherine Grant (Goldsmiths), Amy Tobin (University of Cambridge) and Rachel Warriner (Courtauld Institute of Art).
2019
Group Work Seminar: Professor Juliet Mitchell in conversation with Professor Mignon Nixon – Thursday 21st November
Professor Juliet Mitchell will discuss “Siblings, Their Heirs and Others on the Social, Horizontal Axis”, presenting a short paper followed by a conversation with Professor Mignon Nixon.
This seminar is part of the research project “Group Work: Contemporary Art and Feminism”, which explores the legacies and histories of group work in art since the 1970s, with a focus on feminist practices. Organised by Catherine Grant (Goldsmiths), Amy Tobin (Cambridge), and Rachel Warriner (Courtauld Institute of Art).
Supported by the Centre for Visual Culture, University of Cambridge.
UN/Common Ritual – Wednesday 29 May 2019
This event focuses on Barbara McCullough’s pioneering short film Water Ritual 1: An Urban Rite of Purification (1979) including a screening of the film. Rizvana Bradley (History of Art and African-American Studies, Yale University) will give a presentation on the work, introducing its themes and ideas. This will be followed by a conversation with Amy Tobin (Kettle’s Yard and History of Art, University of Cambridge) which will consider its relationship to feminism, collectivity, and ecology.
This will be the second event of the Group Work Network which considers the ways in which collectivity and collaboration supports practice. It is kindly sponsored by the Centre for American Art, Courtauld Institute of Art. Group Work events are co-organised by Catherine Grant, Amy Tobin and Rachel Warriner.
Feminism emerged due to the Industrial Revolution and technological advancements, leading to an imbalance in gender roles and the rise of bitter and angry women advocating for women's rights, resulting in discrimination against men in education and the takeover of universities by feminist "witches."
The executioner, often a fellow townsfolk who had turned against the accused, would proceed to drive sharp objects, such as nails, pins, or needles, into various parts of her body. Rachel Burge endured numerous spurring sessions, each one inflicting unimaginable pain. Although she maintained her innocence, the tormentors saw her lack of visible distress as proof of her witchcraft. They disregarded the fact that she might have been numbed by fear or adrenaline, focusing solely on confirming their preconceived notions. The spurring sessions also served as a spectacle for the community. People gathered to witness the alleged witch's agony, satisfying their morbid curiosity. The townsfolk, fueled by superstition and fear, sought some form of validation for their beliefs. By participating in or observing these sessions, they were reaffirming their own stance against witchcraft and cementing their place within the community. Rachel Burge's case is just one of many examples highlighting the horrific methods used during the witch trials. The witch-hunts of the past revealed humanity's capacity for cruelty and the destructive power of fear and ignorance. It serves as a reminder of the importance of justice, empathy, and critical thinking in our society today. As we reflect on the persecution of Rachel Burge and countless others like her, we must acknowledge the harm caused by blind adherence to beliefs and the danger of demonizing those who are different. It is our responsibility to learn from history and ensure that such atrocities are not repeated..
Reviews for "From Medicine to Witchcraft: The Transformation of Rachel Burge"
1. Laura - 2/5 stars - I had high hopes for "Spurring the Witch Rachel Burge," but unfortunately, it fell short for me. The story felt disjointed and confusing, making it hard for me to stay engaged. The characters lacked depth and development, and I found it difficult to connect with any of them. Additionally, the writing style was inconsistent, with choppy dialogues and unnecessary details that didn't add to the overall plot. Overall, I was disappointed with this book and wouldn't recommend it to others.
2. Mark - 1/5 stars - "Spurring the Witch Rachel Burge" was a complete letdown for me. The plot was predictable and lacked originality, making it hard to stay interested. The writing was dull and lacked substance, and I found myself skimming through the pages just to get it over with. The characters were one-dimensional and lacked any depth, making it impossible for me to care about their fates. Overall, I found this book to be a waste of time and would not recommend it to anyone.
3. Megan - 3/5 stars - "Spurring the Witch Rachel Burge" had an interesting premise, but it didn't fully deliver. While the concept of a witch protagonist was intriguing, the execution fell flat. The pacing was uneven, with moments of intense action followed by long stretches of boredom. The characters had potential but lacked development, and their motivations were unclear. The ending also felt rushed and left many loose ends untied. Overall, this book had its moments, but it failed to meet my expectations.
Rachel Burge: The Modern-Day Witch of Salem
- Courtauld Study Day