GWA Newsletter October '22 I

Artwork of the week: Jadé Fadojutimi, Rebirth, 2022

Dear Great Women Art lovers,

I hope you are all very well.

Today we very excitingly released the first episode of SEASON 8 of The Great Women Artists with the trailblazer and icon herself, TRACEY EMIN! Listen here.

Last Monday I wrote my Guardian column on Zoe Leonard’s I Want a President (1992) and its relevance in contemporary politics, 30 years on, amidst leaders who appear to lack all sense of empathy towards those in the world around them. Read here.

At the weekend, we (sadly) closed our exhibition, The Story of Art as It’s Still Being Written at Victoria Miro – thank you to all who came down to our rescheduled book launch last Wednesday! But, of course, we ended with a bang, speaking with the legendary Christiane Amanpour on CNN talking all things The Story of Art Without Men! You can watch the full interview here.

Have a good week of GWA’ing and see you next week for a Frieze highlights special.

As always, your top 5s below!

Lots of love,
Katy xoxo

5 Top Shows in Britain

Anne Rothenstein at Stephen Friedman Gallery
Kamala Ibrahim Ishag at the Serpentine
Lee Miller at Newlands House Gallery
Louise Bourgeois at Hauser & Wirth Somerset
Rene Matić at South London Gallery

5 Shows Overseas

Alice Neel at the Pompidou, Paris
Christina Quarles at Hauser & Wirth, New York
Faith Ringgold at the de Young Museum, San Francisco
The Hilton Als Series: Njideka Akunyili Crosby at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
The Obama Portraits Tour featuring Amy Sherald’s official portrait of Michelle Obama at the MFA, Boston

5 Artists Discovered

Alla Horska – Ukrainian painter during the 1960s associated with underground groups who campaigned against the USSR for their human rights and artistic freedoms. Her colourful portraits of working Ukrainians feel especially poignant to return to amidst the continuing conflict.
Dianna Settles – Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Settles’s soothing paintings capture the everyday joy of company, creating tableaus filled with friends, acquaintances, strangers or couples, Settle’s tableaus radiate comfort.
Sahar Ghorishi – Iranian artist based in New York, Ghorishi’s graphic image of Mahsa Amini – highlighting her Kurdish identity – makes visible the present overlapping injustices in Iran and the pursuit for political freedoms for all groups.
Sarah Miska – American painter of pride horses and the fine hairs on a suede jacket, Miska’s too perfect to touch rendering of hairs and other fine detail is satisfying to look at and reexamines what it means to be the “horse girl”.
Okiki Akinfe – Recent graduate of the Slade in London, Akinfe’s sketch-like paintings rendered in washy ink create a sense of timelessness, as if painted decades ago, yesterday or twenty years in the future.

5 Things to Read

What is Black Art? edited by Alice Correia
Fuchsia Hart on Iranian women using art to protest for the Guardian
How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (And Other Parents) by Hettie Judah with an extract in Elephant Magazine
Kat Herriman on Issy Wood for Cultured Mag
The brilliant Lamorna Ash on two university best friends who turned to priesthood in their mid-twenties for the Guardian

5 Things to Watch

Lorna Simpson and Simone White in their new series Artists on Writers | Writers on Artists for Artforum
Christina Quarles: In the Studio, by Hauser & Wirth
Exploring the Black Atlantic, a mini-series by Tate presented by Ekow Eshun
Pamela Colman Smith, Instagram video for the Whitney
They Won't Call it Murder, a documentary by Ingrid Raphaël and Melissa Gira Grant about police violence in the US

5 Things to Do in London

5-8 October, 7:30pm: Elizabeth Day Live at Shoreditch Town Hall
7 October, 7pm: Kamala Ibrahim Ishag in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist at the RCA
13 October, 6pm: An Evening with Barbara Chase-Riboud at the Institut francais du Royaume-Uni, South Kensington
15 October, 2pm: Discussion and screening of Olivia Plender's film ‘Hold Hold Fire’ at the ICA
17 October, 7pm: Discussion and screening of Trinh T. Minh-ha’s film ‘What about China?’ at the Barbican

XOXO
This newsletter is brought to you by Katy Hessel + Viva Ruggi