GWA Newsletter February '23 I
All the art you need to see: from an exhibition on women Abstractionists to a conversation on the great Alice Neel.
Dear Great Women Art Lovers,
I hope you are well, and are having an excellent start to February. Ours kicked off with some exciting news that we are back in the Sunday Times Bestseller List! Thanks for your ongoing support of all things The Story of Art without Men.
We’ve just returned from a night in Cambridge, where I was in conversation with Dorothy Byrne, as I’ve just been made a visiting fellow by the University. The fellowship is at Murray Edwards College, home to the Women’s Art Collection: the largest collection of women’s art in Europe! (Did you know that the largest in the world is in Washington D.C. at The National Museum of Women in the Arts?)
Looking ahead: on 16 February I’m back at The London Library to discuss letter writing with Celia Paul and Edmund de Waal. And on 23 February at the Barbican, I’ll be in conversation with Chantal Joffe and Christina Kimeze to talk about the life, work and legacy of Alice Neel. This is to coincide with Neel’s much anticipated exhibition Hot Off The Griddle – a title taken from a brilliant quote of hers: "One of the reasons I painted was to catch life as it goes by, right hot off the griddle, because when painting or writing are good it's taken right out of life itself, to my mind."
Last week I shared an essay to paid subscribers on Tracey Emin’s most powerful exhibition yet: I Lay Here For You at Jupiter Artland. Sign up here:
In this week’s column in the Guardian, I spoke to legendary collage artist Deborah Roberts about the unjustness of the US criminal justice system, in light of the recent death of Tyre Nichols. Read here.
For those in the US, we’ve just secured some exciting locations for this spring’s US launch + tour for The Story of Art without Men, so keep an eye out!
That’s enough from me, let’s have a look at your top 5.
Katy. Xoxo
5 Shows in Britain
Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70 at Whitechapel (opens 9 February, until 7 May)
Alice Neel at the Barbican (opens 16 February, until 21 May)
Catherine Murphy at Sadie Coles (until 25 February)
Earth Spells: Witches of the Anthropocene including Caroline Achaintre, Emma Hart, Kris Lemsalu, Mercedes Mühleisen, Grace Ndiritu, Florence Peake, Kiki Smith, and Lucy Stein at RAMM, Exeter (opens 11 February, until 7 May)
The New Bend at Hauser & Wirth, Somerset (until 8 May)
5 Shows Overseas
Belkis Ayón at Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany (until 12 March)
Bridget Riley at the Hammer, LA (until 28 May)
Her Brush: Japanese Women Artists at the Denver Art Museum, Denver (until 13 May)
Myth Makers at Tai Kwun, Hong Kong (until 10 April)
Shahzia Sikander in Madison Square Park, NYC (until 4 June)
5 Things to Watch
Celia Paul on Gwen John at the Yale Center for British Art
Christina Quarles: In the Studio by Hauser & Wirth
imagine... with Cornelia Parker
Paula Rego: Secrets and Stories, a documentary by her son, Nick Willing, now on BBC iPlayer (don’t miss my conversation with Nick W on his mother for the GWA Podcast)
Art 21 with Tau Lewis
5 Things to Read
‘Hildegard of Bingen Composes the Cosmos’ by Alex Ross for The New Yorker
‘Ruth Asawa, Without End’ by Ekalan Hou for Hyperallergic
Joan Didion, the Art of Fiction interviewed by Linda Kuehl in The Paris Review
Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey
A Book of Days by Patti Smith
(Sign up for a paid subscription to receive my monthly What everyone should read now newsletter)
5 Artists Discovered
Celia Vasquez Yui (b.1960)
Vasquez Yui works in the Indigenous ceramic tradition of her people, the Shipibo, from the Peruvian Amazon, using a process that has been passed down through thousands of years by Shipibo women. The dazzlingly patterned jaguars, crocodiles, tortoise and armadillos pose together to form a wonderful ensemble, and, like people, they each possess their own personality.
Frida Orupabo (b.1986)
Orupabo is an artist and sociologist who creates collages from her collection of images that she found spoke to her own identity. Born and raised in Norway, Orupabo has said her aims is: “To create works that look back at the viewer is a way to refuse to be made into an object and to say: I see you”.
Sarah Miriam Peale (1800-1885)
Peale is thought to be the first professional woman painter in the US. Working in Philadelphia, she exhibited her first full-size portrait at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1818, and, 6 years later, she and her sister became the first two female members of the academy!
Susan Philipsz (b.1965)
Philipsz’s work explores sound – and the potential ways it can be manipulated – to capture the emotion of a historical event. On view at Tanya Bonakdar in NYC is a film that pays reverence to the victims of the Holocaust through their artistic pursuits.
Xinyi Cheng (b.1989)
I love Cheng’s paintings of friends, strangers and animals that amalgamate in her expressionist dreamscapes. Based in Paris, Cheng has said her paintings start with an observation intertwined with memories, and seek to explore “desire and human relationships.”
5 Things to Do in London
10 February: Curators Alayo Akinkugbe and Emma Lewis on An Alternative History of Photography at The Photographers’ Gallery
12 February: Munroe Bergdorf: Transitional at the Southbank Centre
13 February: Dr Andrea Schlieker and Dr Isabella Maidment on Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Tate Britain
16 February: Panel in response to Zadie Xa's commission at Whitechapel
16 February: Late opening of Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle at Barbican
That’s it from us! 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 – or any reads, films, shows you’re loving right now – please comment below. See you next time!
This newsletter is brought to you by Katy Hessel + Viva Ruggi. Here’s us in our gowns in Cambridge last night (!!):
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