Jane Hughes 

‘Giant’, ‘Amazon,’ Queen of the terrors’; newspaper headlines salivated over Alice Diamond, working class leader of a notorious, all-female gang of women thieves who lived and operated around Lambeth during the 1920s.  Dressed like a film star, Alice drove a black Cadillac and wore diamonds on her fingers. 

 

My research has centred on the historical context in which the gang operated - a period where to covet was normalised, but opportunities were few -, the ‘othering’ of female gangs as ideologically male while sensationalising their femininity, and the absence of females in the genre of the gangster movie.  

 

Responding to a quote about Alice, ‘Biggest woman you ever did see’, my main work is a 4-meter-high drawing of Alice celebrating her gravitas as ‘Queen’ while also melodramatising her in the style of the gangster film poster. Reflecting both on the absence of women in film and social anxieties about women misbehaving.