Contemporary artists and designers create tools of resistance, inside jokes, and radical secret communications in the context of the history of women's suffrage, labor rights, and industrialization.

How do we create justice for ourselves and others when traditional avenues are unavailable? Designed Howlings explores creation as a course of radical action; particularly, artists who use art and design to create secret communications, inside jokes, and hidden modes of resistance. 

This created radicality is nothing new: art and design as a tool of resistance dates back centuries. In honour of the centennial of the Representation of the People Act of 1918 (enfranchising British women over 30), these current arts of resistsance are contextualised by the myriad ways marginalised groups have used art and design to create change.

Design played a part in every element of the suffrage movement, from the marketing of purple, green, and white WSPU-themed clothes and jewelry to imprisoned suffragettes' work painting umbrella stands. Concurrently, women were establishing their standing in the professionalisation of creative fields like graphic design and photography. Housed in a historical, 19th century industrial space, this exhibition seeks to invoke these contexts and the contexts of the design reform movement and industrialization.

As such, SXRVXVE seeks applications from artists and designers engaging with humor, secrecy, activism, subversion, and social justice, particularly those contextualizing their works with these histories. As the exhibition will be in a non-traditional venue, applications for works that benefit from experimental installation and display are encouraged.