GWA Newsletter April #1

We're in NYC. The podcast is returning. I wrote an essay about sitting for Chantal Joffe. And all the art you need to see!

Artworks of the week: Lois Dodd, 2nd Street View, 2016 | Alice Neel, 107th and Broadway, 1976 | Jane Freilicher, Early New York Evening, 1954

Dear Great Women Art Lovers,

I hope you are all well. Greetings from NYC! Lots of exciting announcements this week – let’s take a look.

First up, the podcast is BACK! Season 9 of The Great Women Artists Podcast will return next Wednesday 12 April, and do we have a good line up for you. Can’t wait? Catch up on episodes from the last series featuring Tracey Emin, Mary Beard, Amy Sherald, Jerry Saltz, and more.

US Book update: We’ve got just under a month to go until publication day (2 May!), so last week I headed to Scranton to sign 1500 books exclusively for Barnes & Noble. Preorder your signed copy now, and receive a free postcard featuring a work by the 17th century great, Rachel Ruysch.

Next Monday 10 April we will announce new dates and locations for the US Book Tour – including a special online talk for paid subscribers. Want in? Sign up now.

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In my column for the Guardian this week, I wrote about Lois Dodd, Jane Freilicher and Alice Neel, who painted the New York view from their windows. I'm based right in the centre, in Gramercy, and wanted to write about the feeling of being surrounded by windows, looking out and looking in. (And I love it!) Read it here.

As you can imagine, I’ve been checking out all the galleries, think The Met (to see Cecily Brown), Guggenheim (to see Sarah Sze and Gego), MoMA (the Ming Smith display), Chelsea galleries (Frankenthaler at Gagosian, LaToya Ruby Frazier at Gladstone, Tauba Auerbach at Paula Cooper, Jane Freilicher at Kasmin), Wangechi Mutu at The New Museum, the list goes on, and on. Head to my Instagram for instant updates!

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Last week, I wrote about sitting for the artist Chantal Joffe. Before I left, every Sunday for the last few months I’d go over to Joffe’s studio. We’d chat, she’d paint, I’d drink tea. We called it “The Sunday Sessions”. I don't normally write about personal stuff, but to create a record of this special time, I wrote an essay charting my experience. Read it here. A preview:

The time-based act of sitting for a painter means that they can really see you. Stroke by stroke, they can capture the conversation you had, how you seemed in that moment, the energy of the room. Painting is this longer duration – it’s different from a photograph where you can switch moods from one minute to the next. And as much as I always go to the studio full of excitement, Chantal can always sense what’s going on underneath. Sometimes, she sees things before I do. It’s only when I look at a painting retrospectively that I realise how I was feeling.

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I want to give a huge shout out to my favourite writer, Ali Smith, who kindly included me in her Cultural Highlights for The Observer. (Beside Dame Viv, no less!) Read an interview between me and Ali Smith.

That’s all from me, let’s have a look at your Top 5s!

Katy. Xoxo

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5 Shows in the UK

1. Carey Young at Modern Art Oxford (until 2 July)

2. Finding Family featuring Chantal Joffe, Sikelela Owen, Caroline Walker and Gillian Wearing among many others at the Foundling Museum (until 27 August)

3. If Not Now, When? Generations of Women in Sculpture in Britain, 1960-2022 at Hepworth Wakefield (until 24 September)

4. The Rossettis featuring Elizabeth Sidall and Christina Rossetti at Tate Britain (opens 6 April, until 24 September)

5. Sensing Abstraction: Anni Albers, Gillian Ayres, Christiane Baumgartner, Rana Begum and Bridget Riley at Cristea Roberts (until 22 April)

(Also, as a sixth – and not a woman – if you are in London, do not miss Steve McQueen’s film, Grenfell, at Serpentine Galleries. The reviews have been fantastic.)

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5 Shows Overseas

1. Cecily Brown at the The Met, NYC (until 3 December)

2. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Guggenheim Bilbao (until 10 September)

3. Sarah Sze at the Guggenheim, NYC (until 10 September)

4. Simone Leigh at ICA Boston (opens 6 April, until 4 September)

5. Somaya Critchlow at the FLAG Art Foundation, NYC (until 3 June)

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5 Artists Discovered

Charlotte Posenenske (1930-1985)

Posenenske was a German artist associated with the American Minimalist movement. You can find her work on view at Dia:Beacon, NY. Her sculptures comprise of cardboard and aluminium to remove art’s status as a special commodity, and make industrial machinery feel softer.

Dominique White (b.1993)

White, the recent winner of the MaxMara Art Prize for Women, is known for her hook and sail-like sculptural works that explore how the seas and oceans were used during colonisation.

Judith Joy Ross (b.1946)

In 1967, Ross started by taking what she called “sneaky photographs” of nameless people on the street. She then turned to stark photographs of those she briefly encountered in Eastern Pennsylvania, who she has described as “like her”. Check out her retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Rita Keegan (b.1949)

Keegan was born in the Bronx and moved to London in 1980 where she worked alongside the British Black Arts Movement, cofounding the Brixton Art Gallery in 1982. Her collages, paintings, tapestries and photographs aim to explore notions of family, and complicate reductive representations of Black women in art.

Robin F Williams (b.1984)

I am completely obsessed with Williams’ work, and last weekend saw her painting in the flesh for the first time. Many of her scenes derive from 1930s American horror movies, and it’s as though the many layers of paint move in front of your eyes. This one is on view at the Flag Art Foundation.

5 Things to Read

1. Charlotte Higgins on ‘How Deborah Levy can change your life’ for the Guardian

2. John Vincler on Joan Mitchell for the Paris Review

3. Interview with curator Margot Norton on Wangechi Mutu for Ocula

4. Merve Emre on ‘How Leonora Carrington Feminized Surrealism’ for the New Yorker

5. The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt

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5 Things to Do

13 April: Jennifer Higgie discussing the history of Hermione Burton with Andy Holden at The Gallery of Everything

13 April: Screening of Alice Neel’s New York on Film at the Barbican

15 April: Performance by Florence Peake at Southwark Park Galleries

18 April: Talk on Collecting Women’s Art by Babette Bohn at The National Gallery

20 April: Curatorial tour on Alice Neel: Bringing the archives to life with Annabel Bai Jackson at the Barbican

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That’s it from me! Happy GWA’ing. Thank you for reading this Substack. To receive additional content, and support this page, sign up to be a paid subscriber:

If you think someone else might enjoy this too, please spread the word and share this article. If you have any feedback, please comment below. See you next time. This newsletter is by Katy Hessel + Viva Ruggi.