GWA Newsletter: January
My latest round up of what to read, see and listen to this month
Dear Readers, Happy New Year! I hope you all had a lovely festive season.
It’s time for the first GWA newsletter of the year: from the top exhibitions to see and books to read in 2025, to our new series for paid subscribers about what we can learn from titans Frida Kahlo and Barbara Hepworth. Plus, everything you need to see, read, watch and listen to.
First, though, some updates from me.
Love Katy. Xoxo
The Great Women Artists Podcast
The GWA podcast’s season finale featured Canadian writer Sheila Heti, author of many acclaimed books, including Pure Colour and Motherhood.
I loved hearing Sheila speak about how visual art can influence writing:
“The fact that you can take in a painting all at once, like you can take in a book all at once, is always something that I have thought a lot about. When I was writing Pure Colour I was like, “Can I make a book where, you know, at the very end you have a still image of the whole thing, one image, the way that you do with a painting?”
And that’s a wrap on Season 12 of The Great Women Artists Podcast. Who would you like to hear next? Let me know in the comments!
In The Guardian: talking about the Virgin Mary
Just before Christmas, I explored the many depictions of the Virgin Mary throughout art history, and how female artists like Paula Rego and Artemisia Gentileschi have provided some much needed reality checks.
The Virgin Mary is perhaps the most famous and best documented “female figure” on the planet. But she is also shrouded in mystery and beset by contradictions: both human and divine, queen and servant, a mother and a virgin. Could we trace this to her story – or her lack of story – considering that, despite her ubiquitous presence, her appearance is so brief, and her voice so silent, in the Bible?
On Substack
On Substack, I’ve written my guide to 2025 in Art and Books. It’s brimming with the exhibitions I can’t wait to see and the books I can’t wait to read this year. From a radical meditation on love from Shon Faye, to the first major exhibition of artist Ithell Colquhoun in the Cornish town of St Ives, this list is sure to get you excited about the year ahead. Read it here!
Also on Substack, I did a deep dive into one of my favourite paintings by Paula Rego — The Dance, 1988. Read that here.
In the middle, under the moon’s harshly bright light, the mood becomes darker. A woman, whose identity we can’t see, is dancing with her face turned away from us. Her partner is looks not at her, but at us. What is he telling us? I never know if it’s a protective gaze that says, “don’t worry, I’ve got her” or something more sinister, like he’s letting us know that he has a secret.
The latest instalment of my Substack series ‘5 things we can learn from…’ is dedicated to the wisdom of Frida Kahlo. A preview — Hold on to joy:
“There is nothing more precious than laughter–it is strength to laugh and lose oneself, to be light.”
The title of this work, painted just a few days before Frida died, translates to “Long Live Life” — a phrase that, for me, sums up the joy and perseverance that she embodied, despite her many hardships.
Also for the ‘5 things we can learn from…’ series I wrote about the life and work of Barbara Hepworth. A preview: Bring art into the everyday
Hepworth was a firm believer in bringing art into the everyday. To her, art was life, life was art. This mindset is reflected in her work, where organic forms emulate the shape of her environment. Her sculptures live in and with the world.
She once said “I detest a day of no work, no music, no poetry”. A gifted pianist, she listened to music while working and she loved to dance, comparing it to sculpting — “one is physically involved […] It’s rhythm and dance and everything.”
And now for my cultural picks for the month of January. Enjoy!
8 great shows to see in the UK:
Hew Locke: What Have We Here at the British Museum, London (until 9 Feb)
The Great Mughals: Art, Architecture and Opulence at V&A, London (until 5 May)
Franki Raffles: Photography, Activism, Campaign Works at Baltic, Gateshead (until 16 March)
Lina Iris Viktor: Mythic Time / Tens of Thousands of Rememberings at Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (until 19 Jan)
Lenore Tawney & Toshiko Takaezu: A Remarkable Friendship at Alison Jacques, London (until 11 Jan)
Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes at Hepworth Wakefield (until 21 April)
Somaya Critchlow: Triple Threat, curated by Hilton Als at Maximillian William, London (until 8 Feb)
Nicole Eisenman at Sadie Coles, London (until 25 Jan)
8 great shows to see outside of the UK:
Charlotte Verity and Christopher Le Brun: Left Hand, Right Hand at The Gallery at Windsor, Florida (until 25 April)
Catherine Goodman at Hauser & Wirth, New York (30 Jan–2 April)
Yayoi Kusama at the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia (until 21 April)
Vital Signs: Artists and the Body at MoMA, New York (until 22 Feb)
Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction at National Gallery of Canada (until 2 March)
Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991 at Mudam, Luxembourg (until 2 Feb)
Ruth Asawa: Doing is Living at David Zwirner, Hong Kong (until 22 Feb)
Emil Sands: Salt in the throat at Kasmin Gallery, New York (until 15 Feb) — and don’t miss his talk with legendary curator, Eleanor Nairne, on 9 January.
6 great things to read:
Samantha Harvey: Orbital
Annie Ernaux: The Use of Photography
Eve Babitz: Slow Days, Fast Company
Deborah Levy on Why The Novel Matters, via New Statesman
Julie Mehretu in conversation with Jennifer Higgie, via Ocula Magazine
6 great things to listen to:
Sonia Boyce on A Brush With
Claudette Johnson in conversation with Chantal Joffe and Professor Dorothy Price on Courtauld Cast
Cher on Desert Island Discs
On Lisa Marie Presley with Jessica Olin and Thomas Jones, LRB podcast
Thelma Schoonmaker on This Cultural Life
6 great artists to know:
Plautilla Nelli (1524—1588)
Last month the newly restored painting Madonna del Rosario by Plautilla Nelli, one of Florence’s first known female artists, was unveiled at the church of Santi Giuseppe e Lucia in Montaione, Tuscany.
Habuba Farah (b.1931)
Londoners — check out Habuba’s upcoming show at Jeremy Scholar (17 Jan–12 April). There will also be an accompanying talk between art historians Dr. Ben Street and Dr. Flavia Frigeri — contact the gallery for more.
Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016)
Don’t miss Sheila Heti discussing this fantastic artist on the GWA Podcast — listen here.
Tirzah Garwood (1908–1951)
Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious is at Dulwich Picture Gallery until 26 May.
Tong Yang-Tze (b.1942)
For anyone in NYC, you can see Tong Yang-Tze’s new commission for the Met’s Great Hall until 8 April.
Firelei Báez (b.1981)
I loved this interview with Firelei — and for those in Vancouver, she has a mid-career survey at Vancouver Art Gallery until 16 March.
That’s it from me! Thank you for reading this Substack. If you think someone else might enjoy this too, please spread the word and share this post.
Dear Katy Hessel,
We met during your book signing at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, USA. Ellen Carey, the contemporary American lens based artist of the Polaroid Pull and Struck By Light Photogram artworks requested that I ask for your inscription on her copy of your book; at the time she was in Lacock Abbey, Lacock, Wiltshire, installing her Struck By Light exhibition, curated by Andrew Cochrane, and seen by 220,000 visitors during the year of its showing! Since 2009, I have been looking at this Wadsworth Atheneum"s Matrix artist's Pulls and Photograms, in person, notably during her Matrix solo exhibition, a group exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and in her studio. (I could send you the PDF of my essay, "The Black Swans of Ellen Carey: Of Necessary Poetic Realities" for its comprehensive coverage of her art up to 2014; currently, another essay on her art through 2024, is near completion.) Each essay includes a poem as a most real way to write of (and to) her artworks. Ellen Carey's pictures are deserving of far greater attention than received to date, for many reasons, chief amongst these being the creation of, I count four, new photo-objects for the field of photography, and the fact that Ellen Carey, over four decades, continues to experiment in this burgeoning field as artist, scholar, teacher, and yes, like William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of photography from Lacock Abbey, herself an inventor, and like Anna Atkins, another countrywoman, like yourself, who, according to Ellen Carey's rigorous research, was the first woman in color and the first in word art, with her creation of the cyanotype, as Carey is herself also an original in contemporary color, having discovered new colors with her use of photographic color theory, that is, RGBYMC.
Respectfully,
Donna Fleischer, Poet
dfleischer8@gmail.com
Dear Katie, The sound engineer had you and your last guest speaking so breathlessly fast that I could not enjoy the broadcast. It gave me great anxiety like being at a car or horse race. I know maximum content is important, but I had to close down listening. Please try it a little slower. Thank you, Livia Stein a dedicated artist and listener and admirer.