Women artists

One-woman exhibitions

94

Couples

Exhibitions which feature or are about women artists, in the plural

  • A Story of South Asian Art: Mrinalini Mukherjee and Her Circle: Mrinalini Mukherjee, Leela Mukherjee, Nilima Sheikh
  • Abstract Expressionism: Lee Krasner, Janet Sobel, Joan Mitchell and Louise Nevelson.
  • A Crisis of Brilliance: Dora Carrington
  • America after the Fall: a section on Georgia O’Keeffe.
  • The American Dream: Pop to the Present: prints by Helen Frankenthaler, Carroll Dunham, Ida Applebroog, Dotty Attie, Kiki Smith, Lee Lozano, Louise Bourgeois, Emma Amos and Kara Walker.
  • Art and Life: Winifred Nicholson.
  • Botticelli Reimagined: works by Evelyn de Morgan, Noël Laura Nisbet, Orlan, Tomoko Nagao and Cindy Sherman
  • Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism: works by Anita Malfatti, Tarsila do Amaral, Djanira
  • By the Seaside: Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Anna Fox.
  • Carol Bove and Carlo Scarpa
  • Conflict, Time, Photography: Jane and Louise Wilson, Sophie Ristelhüber and Ursula Schulz-Dornberg.
  • Edith Tudor-Hart and Wolfgang Suschitzky
  • Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider: Gabriele Münter, Marianne von Werefkin
  • The Ingram Collection: Elisabeth Frink
  • ISelf Collection: Bumped Bodies: Maria Bartuszovà, Huma Bhabha, Alexandra Bircken, Ruth Claxton, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Kati Horna, Sarah Lucas, Pippilotti Rist, Nicola Tyson and Cathy Wilkes
  • Killer Heels: shoe designers like Westwood and Hadid, and videos by Marilyn Minter, Leanie van der Vyver.
  • The London Open 2018: Rachel Ara, Gabriella Boyd, Hannah Brown, Rachael Champion, Ayan Farah, French & Mottershead, Céline Manz, Rachel Pimm, Renee So, Alexis Teplin, Elisabeth Tomlinson and Andrea Luka Zimmerman.
  • The Long Now: Alice Anderson, Olivia Bax, Jo Dennis, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Maria Kreyn,
    Rannva Kunoy, Carolina Mazzolari, Misha Milovanovich, Polly Morgan, Martine Poppe, Jenny Saville, Soheila Sokhanvari, Dima Srouji
  • Magic Realism: Art in Weimar Germany 1919 to 1933: Jeanne Mammen
  • Medieval Women: In Their Own Words
  • Myth and Reality: Military Art in the Age of Queen Victoria @ the National Army Museum: Lady Elizabeth Butler and other Victorian women military artists
  • Now You See Us: Women Artists In Britain 1520 to 1920: Sarah Angelina Acland, Elinor Proby Adams, Anna Airy, Helen Allingham, Laura Alma-Tadema, Helen Cordelia Angell, Clare Atwood, Emma Barton, Rose Barton, Mary Beale, Vanessa Bell, Mary Benwell, Zaida Ben-Yusuf, Sarah Biffin, Mary Black, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Rosa Bonheur, Rosa Brett, Anne Brigman, Elizabeth Butler, Carine Cadby, Julia Margaret Cameron, Anna Maria Carew, Joan Carlile, Margaret Sarah Carpenter, Penelope Carwardine, Florence Claxton, Maria Cosway, Dolores Courtney, Catherine da Costa, Anne Seymour Damer, Evelyn De Morgan, Mary Delany, Sarah Anne Drake, Una Dugdale Duval, Susan Durant, Olive Edis, Maria Flaxman, Anne Forbes, Elizabeth Forbes, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, Mary Gartside, Artemisia Gentileschi, Sylvia Gosse, Harriet Gouldsmith, Mary Grace, Nina Hamnett, Minnie Jane Hardman, Clementina Hawarden, Diana Hill, Harriet Hosmer, Anna Hope Hudson, Esther Inglis, Frances Elizabeth Jocelyn, Gwen John, Charlotte Jones, Mary Ann Jones, Louise Jopling, Gertrude Kasebier, Angelica Kauffman, Minna Keene, Lucy Kemp-Welch, Emma Kendrick, Anne Killigrew, Laura Knight, Mary Knowles, L.A. (Ida) Knox, Edmonia Lewis, Mary Linwood, Mathilda Lowry, Anne Mee, Margaret Meen, Anna Lea Merritt, Evelyn Meyers, Clara Montalba, Henrietta Montalba, Mary Moser, Olive Mudie-Cooke, Annie Feray Mutrie, Martha Darley Mutrie, Eveleen Myers, Caroline Emily Nevill, Emily Mary Osborn, Emily Pitchford, Clara Maria Pope, Henrietta Rae, Katherine Read, Frances Reynolds, Christina Robertson, Susannah Penelope Rosse, Ethel Sands, Helen Saunders, Sarah Setchel, Kate Smith, Rebecca Solomon, Marie Spartali Stillman, Maria Spilsbury, Jane Steele, Marianne Stokes, Sarah Stone, Annie Louisa Swynnerton, Levina Teerlinc, Mary Thornycroft, Maria Verelst, Ethel Walker, Agnes Warburg, Henrietta Ward, Joanna Mary Wells, Augusta Withers, Ethel Wright
  • Performing for the Camera: photos by Hannah Wilke, Adrian Piper, Jemima Stehli, Carolee Schneemann, Dora Maurer, Sarah Lucas, Cindy Sherman, Francesca Woodman and Amalia Ulman
  • Peter Pan and Other Lost Children Alice Bolingbroke Woodward and Edith Farmiloe
  • Pre-Raphaelite Sisters: Effie Gray Millais, Christina Rossetti, Annie Miller, Elizabeth Siddal, Fanny Cornforth, Joanna Boyce Wells, Fanny Eaton, Georgiana Burne-Jones, Maria Zambaco, Jane Morris, Marie Spartali Stillman and Evelyn de Morgan
  • Queer British Art 1861 to 1967: Gluck, Ethel Sands, Clare Atwood, Ethel Walker, Laura Knight, Cecile Walton
  • RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology – 1
  • RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology – 2 Laura Aguilar, Hélène Aylon, Poulomi Basu, Mabe Bethônico, JEB, Joan E Biren, melanie bonajo, Carolina Caycedo, Judy Chicago, Tee Corinne, Minerva Cuevas, Agnes Denes, FLAR, Feminist Land Art Retreat, Format Photography, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Gauri Gill, Simryn Gill, Fay Godwin, Laura Grisi, Barbara Hammer, Taloi Havini, Nadia Huggins, Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Barbara Kruger, Dionne Lee, Zoe Leonard, Chloe Dewe Mathews, Mary Mattingly, Ana Mendieta, Fina Miralles, Mónica de Miranda, Neo Naturists, Christine Binnie, Jennifer Binnie, Wilma Johnson, Otobong Nkanga, Josèfa Ntjam, Ada M. Patterson, PARI, People’s Archive of Rural India, Ingrid Pollard, Zina Saro-Wiwa, Susan Schuppli, Seneca Women’s Encampment for the Future of Peace and Justice, Fern Shaffer, Xaviera Simmons, Pamela Singh, Gurminder Sikand, Uýra, Diana Thater, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Andrea Kim Valdez, Francesca Woodman, Sim Chi Yin
  • Ruin Lust: Jane and Louise Wilson, Rachel Whiteread, Tacita Dean and Laura Oldfield Ford
  • Shoes: Pleasure and Pain: shoe designers including Sandra Choi, Caroline Groves, Vivienne Westwood, Sophia Webster, Fleur Oaks and Zaha Hadid
  • Soul Of A Nation: Art In The Age Of Black Power: works by Betye Saar and Elizabeth Catlett
  • Strange and Familiar: Britain as revealed by international photographers: works by Edith Tudor-Hart, Evelyn Hofer, Candida Höfer, Tina Barney and Rineke Dijkstra
  • Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art: Pacita Abad, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Ghada Amer, Arpilleristas, Mercedes Azpilicueta, Yto Barrada, Louise Bourgeois, Jagoda Buić, Margarita Cabrera, Judy Chicago, Myrlande Constant, Tracey Emin, Iva Jankovic, Harmony Hammond, Sheila Hicks, Yee I-Lann, Kimsooja, Acaye Kerunen, Tau Lewis, Teresa Margolles, Georgina Maxim, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Mrinalini Mukherjee, Violeta Parra, Solange Pessoa, Loretta Pettway, Faith Ringgold, Zamthingla Ruivah, Hannah Ryggen, Tschabalala Self, Mounira Al Solh, Angela Su, Lenore Tawney, T. Vinoja, Cecilia Vicuña, Billie Zangewa, Sarah Zapata
  • Women with Vision: Elisabeth Frink, Sandra Blow, Sonia Lawson
  • Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970 to 1990: Brenda Agard; Sam Ainsley; Simone Alexander; Bobby Baker; Anne Bean; Zarina Bhimji; Gina Birch; Sutapa Biswas; Tessa Boffin; Sonia Boyce; Chila Kumari Singh Burman; Shirley Cameron; Thalia Campbell; Helen Chadwick; Jennifer Comrie; Judy Clark; Caroline Coon; Eileen Cooper; Stella Dadzie; Poulomi Desai; Vivienne Dick; Nina Edge; Marianne Elliott-Said (Poly Styrene); Rose English; Catherine Elwes; Cosey Fanni Tutti; Aileen Ferriday; Format Photographers Agency; Chandan Fraser; Melanie Friend; Carole Gibbons; Penny Goring; Joy Gregory; Hackney Flashers; Margaret Harrison; Mona Hatoum; Susan Hiller; Lubaina Himid; Amanda Holiday; Bhajan Hunjan; Alexis Hunter; Kay Fido Hunt; Janis K. Jefferies; Claudette Johnson; Mumtaz Karimjee; Tina Keane; Rita Keegan; Mary Kelly; Rose Finn-Kelcey; Roshini Kempadoo; Sandra Lahire; Lenthall Road Workshop; Linder; Loraine Leeson; Alison Lloyd; Rosy Martin; Rita McGurn; Ramona Metcalfe; Jacqueline Morreau; The Neo Naturists; Lai Ngan Walsh; Houria Niati; Annabel Nicolson; Ruth Novaczek; Hannah O’Shea; Pratibha Parmar; Symrath Patti; Ingrid Pollard; Jill Posener; Elizabeth Radcliffe; Franki Raffles; Samena Rana; Su Richardson; Liz Rideal; Robina Rose; Monica Ross; Erica Rutherford; Maureen Scott; Lesley Sanderson; See Red Women’s Workshop; Gurminder Sikand; Sister Seven; Monica Sjöö; Veronica Slater; Penny Slinger; Marlene Smith; Maud Sulter; Jo Spence; Suzan Swale; Anne Tallentire; Shanti Thomas; Martine Thoquenne; Gee Vaucher; Suzy Varty, Christine Voge; Del LaGrace Volcano; Kate Walker; Jill Westwood; Nancy Willis; Christine Wilkinson; Vera Productions, Shirley Verhoeven
  • Work in Process: Julie Cockburn, Jessa Fairbrother, Alma Haser, Felicity Hammond, Liz Nielsen
  • The World Goes Pop @ Tate Modern: works by Joan Rabascall, Kiki Kogelnik, Judy Chicago, Evelyne Axell, Ángela García, Mari Chordà, Jana Želibská, Dorothée Selz, Beatriz González, Anna Maiolino, Uwe Lausen, Eulàlia Grau, Ulrike Ottinger, Nicola L, Ruth Francken, Ángela García, Mari Chordà, Marta Minujín, Isabel Oliver, Teresa Burga, Martha Rosler, Dorothée Selz, Delia Cancela, Renate Bertlmann, Chryssa Vardea, Romanita Disconzi, Natalia Lach-Lachowicz (Natalia LL), Sanja Iveković

Women’s history exhibitions

Books about women artists

Art books by women authors

ISelf Collection: Bumped Bodies @ the Whitechapel Gallery

The ISelf collection is a UK-based collection of contemporary art which focuses on ‘issues of identity and the human condition’. In other words – bodies. It was established in 2009 and includes ‘paintings, sculptures and photographs mainly of the human body with a deliberate emphasis towards collecting female artists. In other words – women’s bodies.

Installation view of ISelf Collection: Bumped Bodies at the at the Whitechapel Gallery. Photo by Steven White

Installation view of ISelf Collection: Bumped Bodies at the at the Whitechapel Gallery. Photo by Steven White

This exhibition is the final one in a series of four selections from the collection which the Whitechapel has held over the past twelve months, each one showcasing works by different artists in the collection. This one displays the work of 23 international artists. To quote the blurb, the exhibition:

invites us to reflect on the notion of self by questioning the physical and material cohesion of bodies and sculptures… Works on show offer fragmented, deconstructed and visceral perspectives where bodies intersect with inanimate objects… In this final display drawn from the ISelf collection artists open up the possibility of thinking beyond selfhood.

The exhibition as a whole takes its name from one particular work, a vivid depiction of pregnancy being undergone by what looks like a transhuman cyborg from the future – Bumped Body by Paloma Varga Weisz’s (b. 1966, Germany).

Bumped Body (2007) by Paloma Varga Weisz. Courtesy of Paloma Varga Weisz © DACS 2018. Photo by Stefan Hostettler, Düsseldorf

Bumped Body (2007) by Paloma Varga Weisz. Courtesy of Paloma Varga Weisz © DACS 2018. Photo by Stefan Hostettler, Düsseldorf

According to the guide, the work:

reflects on the idea of pregnancy as an extreme form of selfhood, examining the tension between the expectant body as a subject and an object.

According to art theorist Amelia Jones, pregnancy is one of the most extreme states of the human condition, as it reveals the ‘tension between self as subject and self as object’. The entire exhibition is a reflection on ‘shifting concepts of selfhood’.

The intersection between bodies and inanimate objects is probably most vividly dramatised in Quan (2009 to 2010) by Berlinde De Bruyckere, where a wax cast of a bony-assed, white person is burrowing into a dirty mattress, for all the world like a character from a Samuel Beckett monologue. We’ve all had mornings when we felt like this.

Quan (2009-10) by Berlinde De Bruyckere. Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth © Berlinde De Bruyckere. Photo by Mirjam Devriendt

Quan (2009 to 2010) by Berlinde De Bruyckere. Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth © Berlinde De Bruyckere. Photo by Mirjam Devriendt

Nearby are some elegant if distorted thighs and calves cast in slabby bronze stepping out atop a pair of chunky platform shoes. This is As yet untitled (Croccioni bronze) by Rebecca Warren (UK b.1965). According to the catalogue, these:

striding high-heeled legs fuse high Modernism with the lowly comic book in an expression of pure Eros.

As yet untitled (Croccioni bronze), 2009 by Rebecca Warren. Courtesy Maureen Paley, London © Rebecca Warren

As yet untitled (Croccioni bronze), 2009 by Rebecca Warren. Courtesy Maureen Paley, London © Rebecca Warren

Talking of the erotic, nearby is a striking silk print showing multiple iterations of a photo of a pneumatic naked woman slightly bending forward, much in the style of Andy Warhol. Deprived of a face, and so of much identity, and in its dumb repetition, surely as straightforward an objectification of the female body as you could get.

Untitled (5 Nudes) circa 1980 by John Stezaker. Courtesy of John Stezaker and Friedrich Petzel, New York

Untitled (5 Nudes) circa 1980 by John Stezaker. Courtesy of John Stezaker and Friedrich Petzel, New York

Taking the mickey out of all such po-faced, soft-porn images of naked women is Sarah Lucas, sticking her tongue out – as usual – at men, male artists, and office furniture.

Here she’s taken a rugby ball, covered it in glue and then carefully encrusted it with cigarettes laying flat and moulded to the ball’s conical shape. She’s then sawn the result in half and stuck each half to the back-rest of a modern office chair, to create a crude caricature of a female torso.

Oral Gratification by Sarah Lucas (2000) Courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, London © Sarah Lucas

Oral Gratification by Sarah Lucas (2000) Courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, London © Sarah Lucas

Lucas’s work, according to the catalogue, is:

characterised by witty verbal and visual puns and a satirical look at sexual politics and the representation of women in the media.

Ever since I saw her stuff in the Sensation exhibition 21 years ago, I’ve loved Lucas’s work and wanted to see more of her bovver boy approach to sculpture and popular culture. It’s a shame she doesn’t seem to be about much any more.

An entirely different and far more earnest approach to sculpture is taken by Tony Cragg CBE (b.1949 Liverpool) represented here by a cast of a head which has been distorted or winnowed by extreme wind and pressure into an apparently melting, futuristic form.

Big Head Green (2009) by Tony Cragg © DACS 2017

Big Head Green (2009) by Tony Cragg © DACS 2017

So far I’ve picked out six of the biggest, most obvious works, but there were some 16 others, often more subtle and oblique than these examples – like the simple twig with human hair attached made by Bojan Šarcevic, or the set of little puppets made by Wael Shawky which represent the story of the Crusades from the Arab point of view, or the series of postcards of Tudor kings and queens who’ve had their faces defaced by Ruth Claxton.

The whole show is contained in only one room but there’s quite a startling variety of shapes, sizes and types of art on display. Strange, unnerving, unsettling – I liked it a lot. And it is FREE.

Installation view of ISelf Collection: Bumped Bodies at the Whitechapel Gallery. Photo by Steven White

Installation view of ISelf Collection: Bumped Bodies at the Whitechapel Gallery. Photo by Steven White

The artists are:

  • Maria Bartuszovà
  • Huma Bhabha
  • Alexandra Bircken
  • Tian Doan na Champassak
  • Ruth Claxton
  • Tony Cragg
  • Enrico David
  • Berlinde De Bruyckere
  • Geoffrey Farmer
  • Georg Herold
  • Kati Horna
  • Sarah Lucas
  • Seb Patane
  • Pippilotti Rist
  • Bojan Šarčević
  • Wael Shawky
  • Daniel Silver
  • John Stezaker
  • Nicola Tyson
  • Cathy Wilkes

Related links

Other exhibitions currently on at the Whitechapel Gallery

More Whitechapel Gallery reviews