Mary Kelly is a legendary artist, feminist and educator. Her Post-Partum Document (1973–79) was one of the first research-based works in an international art context, and was ground-breaking in its form which combines Lacanian structuralism with personal diary notes and field research on the first years of living with a small child. The film Night Cleaners (1972–75), created within the Berwick Street Collective group, made feminist movie history.

Other important works are Interim (1984–89), Gloria Patri (1992) and The Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi (2001). In Sweden, her works have been shown at the Uppsala Art Museum in 1994 and at Moderna Museet Stockholm in 2010.

Mary Kelly is also famous as an educator at Goldsmith's College, London University in the 1980s, on the Whitney programme 1989–1996, and since 1996 she holds a position as Distinguished Professor and Head of Interdisciplinary Studio at UCLA.

Mary Kelly has been a very important as a source of inspiration for the Malmö Art Academy, and has taught and lectured there on several occasions.

On 2 June, Mary Kelly will be made honorary doctor at Lund University. To acknowledge this event, the Malmö Konsthall art gallery, in collaboration with the Malmö Art Academy and the Malmö Art Museum, is organising a seminar with the participation of Mary Kelly herself, as well as two junior artists for whom Mary Kelly has played a major role – Maj Hasager and Bettina Vestergaard.

Programme:

13:00 Introduction

13:10 Mary Kelly on being an artist

14:00 Bettina Vestergaard: Gatherings – Between Image and Text

15:00 Maj Hasager: Excavations – notes on slow art processes

Welcome!