Raging Dyke Network

(2012)

Raging Dyke Network­ (RDN) is one of an edition of 20 multi-view postcards, commissioned by Glasgow Women’s Library: Two Decades and 21 Revolutions in which 21 women artists and 21 women writers were commissioned by the Library to create new work inspired by items and artefacts in its collection.

Raging Dyke Network­ was a group of radical separatist lesbians active in the late 1990s. It spanned across 52 locations from the UK, Europe, Canada and USA. At the network’s centre was an activist in Norwich, who donated materials – including personal letters and zines – to the Glasgow Women’s Library and the Lesbian Archive in 2000. The postcard series aims to represent the network’s scale and make visible a history often overlooked, without revealing the personal and political content that belonged to a group who identified themselves in terms of their separatist gender politics.

The series was realised through a key collaboration with Alice Andrews of Glasgow Women’s Library, and exhibited in the group show 21 Revolutions at the Intermedia Gallery at the Centre of Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (22 September to 13 October, 2012) and at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (20 July to 8 September, 2013). Raging Dyke Network also featured in the group show Practicing Landscape: Land, Histories and Transformation, Glasgow, 2020.


Raging Dyke Network, 2012

Colour postcards
15cm(w) x 10cm (h)
Variable edition of 20, each work is 1 of 2


Related Resources

Bird, Nicky. Raging Dyke Network, 2012 (4/20, 14/20), in Feminism and Sexuality, LGBT+collections, National Museums, Liverpool

Bird, Nicky. ‘Voyaging Voices: Ethical Encounters between Donor, User, Archivist, and Artist,’ Feminist Ethics in the Archive, Glasgow Women’s Library Symposium Event, CCA, Glasgow, 17 September 2014

‘Out of the archives,’ 21 Revolutions, DIVA, April 2014, pp. 42-43

Patrick, Adele (ed). ‘Nicky Bird with Alice Andrews: Raging Dyke Network,’ in 21 Revolutions: New writing and prints inspired by the collection at Glasgow’s Women’s Library 20, 118-119, Glasgow: Glasgow Women’s Library & Freight Books, 2014. ISBN 978-0-9522273-3-5

21 Revolutions: Two Decades of Changing Minds at Glasgow Women’s Library, Exhibition Information, Intermedia Gallery, CCA, 2012

Bird, Nicky. ‘Raging: Revisiting Raging Dyke Network.’ Practicing Landscape: Land, Histories and Transformation, 6 Nov – 11 Dec 2020 [Symposium presentation]

Bird, Nicky. ‘Raging: Revisiting Raging Dyke Network,’ in J. Camlot, M. Langford, L.M. Morra (eds.), Collection Thinking: Within and Without Libraries, Archives and Museums, 307-319, Routledge, London, UK, 2022. ISBN 9781003282303


TOP IMAGE: Raging Dyke Network, 2012 by Nicky Bird with Alice Andrews. Photograph by Alan Dimmick. Courtesy of Glasgow Women’s Library.