Current Exhibition

Jo Spence with Terry Dennett and David Robert, ‘Return to Nature’, from The Final Project, 1991-92. Laminated plastic panel made by Terry Dennett circa 2008, 405 by 500 mm. All Jo Spence’s work © Image Centre, Toronto.

The Project Remains Incomplete: Jo Spence, Curated by Terry Dennett

22 May – 10 July 2026

Opening Reception: Thursday 21 May, 6 - 8pm
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Peltz Gallery
Birkbeck, University of London
43 Gordon Square
London WC1H 0PD

This exhibition restages ‘art – photography – therapy’, an exhibition of Jo Spence’s photography curated by Terry Dennett in 2008, for an international photo therapy conference in Turku, Finland. Discovered in a battered portfolio in the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive, the original exhibition’s 41 panels include some of the best known and impactful of Spence’s work, from the series Remodelling Photo History (1981-1982) and The Picture of Health? (1982-1986) to various photo therapy collaborations with Rosy Martin and others, ending with the Final Project she made while coming to terms with a terminal diagnosis.

‘The Project Remains Incomplete’ considers the role of Dennett in nurturing the educational and artistic legacy of Spence, after her death from leukaemia. Dennett, a lifelong collaborator of Spence’s, dedicated his life to stewarding her archive and making it available to students and the public. The title of the exhibition comes from Dennett’s own reflections about Spence’s unfinished Final Project.

This restaging, curated by a group of students, alumni and staff at Birkbeck, University of London, also brings together archival material and voices that were not present in Dennett’s original curation in Finland. In so doing, ‘The Project Remains Incomplete’ invites reflections on the role of curators and archivists in activating the past for use in the present, and in shaping artistic afterlives and reputations. Spence’s work continues to speak to current concerns with women’s self-representation, agency and the female gaze, as well as the therapeutic and political uses of photography.

Jo Spence (1934-1992) was a writer, educator and photographer. Sometimes labelled as an ‘artist’, she preferred to call herself a ‘cultural sniper’, using her camera to shoot and expose issues in culture and self-representation. In 1974, Spence and Dennett founded Photography Workshop, a research and skills-building project centred on photography. Spence was also involved in founding the Hackney Flashers, an East London-based women’s photographic collective. In the 1980s, Spence and Rosy Martin pioneered photo therapy, revisiting and restaging crucial parts of their lives and development with photography. Spence used photography to help herself and other women deal with the experience of living with cancer and navigating the industrial-medical complex. Throughout her life and career as a photographer, Spence defied simple categorisation, working in a way that did not fit with conventional photography histories.

Jo Spence’s work is held in international collections including the Tate (UK), the National Portrait Gallery (UK), the Centre Pompidou (France), the Museum of Modern Art (USA), and MACBA (Spain). It has featured in recent exhibitions Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK, 1970-1990 (Tate Britain), The 80s: Photographing Britain (Tate Britain), and Lives Less Ordinary: Working-Class Britain Re-seen (Two Temple Place), and is represented by Richard Saltoun Gallery. Her archive is looked after by the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive at Birkbeck, and the Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Led by Patrizia Di Bello, Professor of History and Theory of Photography at Birkbeck, the curatorial team includes Talia Ulrich, Olga Murphy, Kerry Hart, Julian Ehsan, Farzad Fazilat, and Chloe Griffiths.

Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive is a collection of materials from, and about, the life of photographer Jo Spence. The collection was compiled and then generously donated to Birkbeck by Spence’s former collaborator, Terry Dennett, who maintained the Jo Spence Memorial Archive in Islington (London) from 1992 until his death in 2018. The collection is now looked after by Professor Patrizia Di Bello at Birkbeck, and is available to students, researchers, educators, and anyone interested.