Monica Sjöö: The Reading List

Amy Budd, the co-curator of our current exhibition, shares the inspiration and research behind the show, and the key texts that shaped their understanding of Monica Sjöö’s work.

Monica Sjöö: Life and Letters 1958-2005, by Rupert White

Monica Sjoo was a passionate and outspoken pioneer of feminist art and female spirituality. This book brings together her diaries, writing and correspondence in a way that demonstrates the full range of her influence

Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth by Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor

This classic exploration of the Goddess through time and throughout the world draws on religious, cultural, and archaeological sources to recreate the Goddess religion that is humanity’s heritage.

The White Goddess by Robert Graves

This labyrinthine and extraordinary book, first published more than fifty years ago, was the outcome of Graves’s vast reading and curious research into strange territories of folklore, mythology, religion and magic.

The Living Goddesses by Maria Gimbutas

The Living Goddesses crowns a lifetime of innovative, influential work by one of the twentieth-century’s most remarkable scholars. Marija Gimbutas wrote and taught with rare clarity in her original-and originally shocking-interpretation of prehistoric European civilization. 

Out of the Darkness: Greenham Voices 1981-2000 by Kate Kerrow and Rebecca Mordan

Out of the Darkness reunites the women of Greenham to share their recollections of the highs and lows of camp life, explore how they organised, and uncover the non-violent ways they challenged military, police and cultural forces, all in the name of peace.

Greenham Common: Women at the Wire by Barbara Harford and Sarah Hopkins, eds

The writing of more than 50 women covers, in chronological order, the events that brought women to Greenham and the actions that took place.

The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World by Jennifer Higgie

Sharing her own memories of otherworldly experiences, Jennifer Higgie discusses the solace of ritual, the gender exclusions of art history, the contemporary relevance of myth, the boom in alternative ways of understanding the world and the impact of spiritualism on feminism and contemporary art.

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

This groundbreaking and life-changing work remains just as powerful, important and true as it was nearly fifty years ago, and is essential reading both as a historical document and as a study of women living in a man’s world.

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir famously wrote, ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, woman’. In this groundbreaking work of feminism she examines the limits of female freedom and explodes our deeply ingrained beliefs about femininity.

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici

A cult classic since its publication in the early years of this century, Caliban and the Witch is Silvia Federici’s history of the body in the transition to capitalism.

Discover Monica Sjöö’s work for yourself in our ongoing exhibition. Tickets £6-£12, available at the shop.