Last Updated on March 18, 2024
Women powering the arts
On International Women’s Day, exhibitions showcasing female artists blossomed across London. In Chelsea, The Future is Female opened at The Garrison Chapel, while in Hampstead, Burgh House launched two exhibitions of female artists who fled the Nazis and took refuge in the UK in the late 1930s.
Built in 1859, the Grade II listed Garrison Chapel is a beautiful, light filled space with an imposing exterior of fine brickwork and an iconic rose window which is the emblem of the Chelsea Barracks, which played an important part in British military history. In 1990 the chapel was deconsecrated and became a community hub and art gallery which hosts exhibits of work from the students who are part of the King’s Foundation. Considering its history as a predominantly male space, it is especially pleasing that the gallery is currently hosting an exhibition of female sculptors with an all-female team of curators. Spearheaded by artist, Nicole Farhi, the group show includes over 40 works, exhibiting both established and emerging female sculptors.
Sculpture has traditionally been another predominantly male space with the female form usually being represented through the male gaze. Here women are doing it for themselves, and the exhibition explores how contemporary female artists are continuing to challenge the traditional notion of sculpture while considering themes including identity, empowerment, and the environment.
Charlotte Colbert’s black and white photographs of female nudes are presented in a series of frames arranged to reconstruct the body. Her Benefit Supervisor Breathing is presumably a response to or comment on Lucian Freud’s famous painting of a similar title, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping.
Colbert’s Masectomy Mameria is a disturbing and striking piece – a collection of perky pink breasts with some gouged out, leaving gaping holes where once a breast lived.
A trio entitled A Long Line of Trees by Oh Myung Hee beautifully captures, in minimalist form, the essence of the cherry blossom season where rows of trees as far as the eye can see explode into flower. It is a wonderful representation of the fecundity of nature and women.
Nicole Farhi’s Jeux de Mains it is a tender piece that depicts a number of hands and is suggestive of embrace. While the hand is a symbol of creativity and also of tenderness, the title of the work hints perhaps at something deeper. In French, jeux de mains (which literally translates as hand games) is part of a saying which means that games that are too rough will end in tears.
The Future is Female not only showcases female artists but provides a platform to exhibit work by female sculptors. In the artworld, there continue to be many discrepancies between male and female representation in the art world and this is particularly marked in sculpture as a genre.
Across town, in leafy Hampstead, Burgh House – a Grade I listed, Queen Anne house – is exhibiting the work of two female artists, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky and Dorothy Bohm, émigrés to the UK from Vienna and Germany respectively. Both were refuges from Nazism in the 1930s.
When a 14-year-old Dorothy Bohm boarded the train that enabled her to escape Lithuania in 1939, her father put a Leica camera around her neck. She was to go on to become a prominent post-war photographer and in the early 1970s she was involved in establishing the Photographer’s Gallery in London. At the age of 21 she established a photographic studio in Manchester but later left the confines of the studio to traverse the globe, recording the human condition. Entitled About Women: photographs by Dorothy Bohm, this centenary show (Bohm died last year, aged 99), exhibits her portrayals of womanhood and the changing conditions of women over the decades.
Displayed across a number of rooms at Burgh House, Bohm’s black and white photographs are humorous, poignant and always powerful. They were created in the context of tremendous change for women in society – from the development of the contraceptive pill to the growth of the feminist movement, and votes for women.
On the ground floor of Burgh House is an exhibition entitled (in)Visible Women by artist Marie-Louise von Motesiczky. She lived in Vienna where her family played a central role in intellectual and artistic circles. Her grandmother, Anna, was one of Freud’s earliest patients and is immortalised in his Studies on Hysteria. Von Motesiczky was already established as an artist – she studied with Max Beckmann and was on the cutting edge of modern art – when she and her mother fled in 1938 the day after the Nazis annexed Austria. They settled first in The Netherlands and then sought refuge in the UK in 1939. Her brother who refused to leave Austria, founded a resistance group and was later murdered at Auschwitz.
Her vibrant paintings depict women at various stages of life and in a range of poses from sewing, bathing, mending and socialising. Some are friends, carers, some are at work while others relaxing. There is also a moving set of sketches of her ageing mother, Henriette, who became one of her models as Marie-Louise had to take on the role of carer.
Von Motesiczky was a woman of independent means which gave her artistic freedom without commercial pressure. She was able to explore and depict the lives of her female subjects in a way that remained unusual throughout the 20th century. In her paintings, women are depicted as active, involved in their lives outside of the domestic sphere and not sitting quietly staring out of windows. Nor are they necessarily young and beautiful. These works are created through the female gaze. Before her death in 1996 (aged 90), von Motesiczky established a Trust and the bulk of her oeuvre was passed to it thus enabling her works to continue to be promoted.
In an essay for the exhibition, curator, Sophie Richards, writes about the continued growth of interest in artworks by women. In 2021, 56% of solo shows in non-commercial galleries in London were by female artists. The Royal Academy recently had a marvellous retrospective of the work of Marina Abramović while the Barbican exhibited the work of Alice Neel. Tate Britain is currently showing Women in Revolt (art and acrivism in the UK 1970 – 1990) and later this year Tate Britain opens a show on women artists in Britain 1520 – 1920. Exhibitions at Tate Modern, The Serpentine, the Whitechapel and The Hayward are also currently running or showing soon. Yet while the profile of women artists continues to grow, the global art market continues to favour male artists with a recent study of 5000 auctioned paintings revealing that for every £1 earned by a male artist, a female artist earned 10p. Artists represented by commercial galleries are 67% male whereas 66% of postgrad art students are female or non-binary. While the profile of female artists is improving in museum collections and solo shows, there is still a long way to go before parity is achieved.
The Future is Female runs at The Garrison Chapel until 6 April.
The Garrison Chapel, Chelsea SW1W 8BG. Closed Mondays
(in)Visible Women and About Women: photographs by Dorothy Bohm run until 15 December.
Burgh House, New End Square, London, NW3 1LT Open Wed, Thurs, Fri and Sun 10 – 4
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