The Body in Women’s Art Now: Part 1 – Embodied     Oct 14 - Nov 21, 2009

Artists: Sigalit Landau (British Israeli) Regina José Galindo (Guatemalan) Jessica Lagunas (Guatemalan) Lydia Maria Julien (British)
Exhibition Venues: ROLLO Contemporary Art, London and New Hall Art Collection, Cambridge
Dates: 14th October – 21st November 2009 (ROLLO) 31st January – 28th February 2010 (New Hall Art Collection)
Image: Sigalit Landau, Barbed Hula, 2000, video, courtesy of the artist and ROLLO Contemporary Art

The exhibition examines the re-emergence of the physical body as the site of art making in the last decade –examining the use of violence and ritualistic practice, challenges of endurance, and the relationship between artist and viewer’s body. Examining the diverse social and political issues the body has been used to communicate.

Sigalit Landau internationally acclaimed Landau represented Israel in the 1997 Venice Biennale. She has shown at prestigious international art institutions, including solo exhibitions at MOMA, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Ikon Gallery and group shows at P.S.1, The Brooklyn Museum, and The Pompidou Centre including work currently on show in elles@pompidou. Landau gained acclaim for her provocative video Barbed Hula, 2000, in which the artist hula’ed naked with barbed wire, using her body in a ritualistic manner to explore transformations, history, memory, politics, borders, which will be shown in the Body in Women’s Art Now: Embodied.

Regina José Galindo achieved wide recognition for her videoed performance ¿Quién puede borrar las huellas? (Who can erase the traces?), 2003, which documents the artist’s walk from Guatemala City’s constitutional Court to the National Palace imprinted with bloody footprints. Galindo received the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale in 2005; her physical and often violent works using her own body have been shown at P.S.1, Le Plateau in Paris, in Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum and recently in a solo exhibition The Body of Others at Modern Art Oxford, 2009.

Jessica Lagunas: plays along with women’s beauty rituals in her video works, performing them in exaggerated ways to reflect the pressures imposed by today’s society, with repetitive gestures the artists applies lipstick continuously for one hour to make the beautiful bizarre. With aesthetics akin to contemporary advertising Lagunas questions the images of femininity we are sold in contemporary society. Lagunas works have been shown at Bronx Museum, Jersey City Museum and is included in the anthology ‘Imagining Ourselves, Global Voices from a New Generation of Women’.

Lydia Maria Julien is an emerging photography artist, graduate of Central St Martins MA Fine Art 2007. Julien’s work has been shown at Courtauld Institute of Art, included in East Wing 08 and Hidden Talents at the National Portrait Gallery. The works selected for the exhibition explore the objectification of the body and looks at the relationship between the body and audience, art and its institutions.

The press launch and private view for The Body In Women’s Art Now- Embodied Part 1, will be held at ROLLO Contemporary Art, 51 Cleveland Street, London W1T 4JH on Tuesday 13th October 2009 from 6– 10pm.
A private view will be held at the New Hall Art Collection on 31st January 2010 from 3 – 6pm.

There will be an accompanying exhibition catalogue with essays by Philippa Found and Dr Harriet Riches available through ROLLO Contemporary Art.

For further details or images please contact Yasmin Amaratunga, +44(0)207 580 0020 yasmin@rolloart.com or Philippa Found on philippa@rolloart.com.

Further Exhibitions:

Part II: Trangressive Bodies (title TBC)
2nd March – 2nd April 2010 ROLLO Contemporary Art
10th April – 9th May 2010 New Hall Art Collection

This show includes artists whose works represent and reinterpret the image of the female body. Engaging with how feminine identity and ideals are constructed and can be disrupted through the image of the female body. Examining the image of the adolescent body in art, engagement in fantasy and fairy tales, bodies in states of flux, the abject and the grotesque.

Part III: The Body Re-made (title TBC)
Sept -Oct 2010 ROLLO Contemporary Art, London
6th November – 4th December 2010 New Hall Art Collection

A hybrid of the first two shows –reinterpreted and constructed bodies. The artists grouped here present abstract, disrupted, manipulated and hybrid bodies. Exploring the shifting position and perception of the body in relationship to developing technologies, artists create bodily constructions. Works may suggest the mortality of the body, the development of the body, the relationship of the body to nature and technology.

Notes

A press launch and private view for The Body In Women’s Art Now- Embodied Part 1, will be held at ROLLO Contemporary Art, 51 Cleveland Street, London W1T 4JH on Tuesday 13th October 2009 from 6 – 10 pm. A launch at New Hall Art Collection will be held on 31st January from 3 – 6pm.

There is much said about the under-representation of women artists in the canon of Western Art History. In the United Kingdom significant gaps still remain in our national collections, which continue to display predominately male artist’s works. A 2009 article in the Guardian noted that of the 2,300 works on show in the British National Gallery just four of these are paintings by two women artists. Meanwhile at Tate Modern, which holds the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in the world, women artists represent just 12% of the entire collection.

Whilst numerous reasons have contributed to this imbalance historically, it is important not to dismiss this as history just yet.

In the contemporary British context, women artists continue to remain proportionately under represented in public art exhibitions and public collections of contemporary art compared with their male colleagues. Statistically speaking, every year since the year 2000 approximately 62% of students graduating with degrees in the creative arts in the U.K. each year have been female. However, this is yet to be reflected in public exhibitions. For example, since 2000, only 29% of solo exhibitions at the Tate Modern art have been of women artist’s works. Similarly, out of the 116 artists who have been short-listed for the Turner Prize since its origins in 1984, only 35 have been women artists - and only three women have ever won the Prize.

And so it seems - although this may be better than in the past - there is still a distance to go to equality.

Whilst there are signs of an international attention turning to women’s art practice, for example the current women’s exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, elles@pompidou and recent public exhibition in U.S. devoted to women art practice such as, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution held in 2007 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (which travelled to the National Museum of Women in the Arts Washington, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, NY and Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada) and Global Feminisms at Brooklyn Museum in 2007, (which travelled to Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Massachusetts) - the last all women’s exhibition to be held in a major exhibition space in the UK was Bad Girls, held at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London in 1993.

In a male dominated art-world I believe it is imperative to give a space to significant women practitioners to cement their position in the contemporary art world’s consciousness.

As Maura Reilly said ‘the barriers are lifting but they have not yet been lifted’.

The three part traveling exhibition, The Body in Women’s Art Now, exhibiting at ROLLO Contemporary Art, London and traveling to The New Hall Art Collection, Cambridge - Europe’s largest women’s art collection - aims to contribute positively to this current dialogue giving women’s art greater visibility in the United Kingdom and contributing to the study of women’s art.

The Venues:

The New Hall Art Collection is a permanent collection of contemporary art by women artists, displayed throughout the Murray Edwards College. The Collection has come about as the result of generous gifts and loans from artists and donors. There are now more than 350 contemporary artworks by women artists including Paula Rego, Mary Kelly and Cornelia Parker. By virtue of its size and specialisation, the New Hall Art Collection has become the most significant of its kind in Europe. The Temporary Exhibition Space is found on the lower corridor offers women artists the opportunity to showcase their work for periods of up to one month. The space is open 7 days a week, from 10 am – 6pm. A list of up and coming exhibitions can be found on website, www.art.newhall.cam.ac.uk
Contact: Amanda Rigler, Curator, art@newhall.cam.ac.uk, 01223 769404, New Hall Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, CB3 0DF,

ROLLO Contemporary Art Gallery launched in 2005 with The Writer, the installation of a 30m high table and chair on Hampstead Heath, and fast established itself as a serious force in the art world. Based originally in Islington, ROLLO moved to its current space in London W1, in January 2008. ROLLO holds seven in house exhibitions as well as curating exhibitions in outside venues; such as at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Arts Club Dover Street, Clifford Chance Canary Wharf and Selfridges Department Store. The gallery aims to bring art to innovative spaces to reach a wider audience and make art more accessible. ROLLO Gallery Directors are Simon Gillespie and Philippa Found.
Gallery hours are: Monday – Friday 10am – 9pm and weekends by appointment. Full exhibition programme and artists can be seen at See www.rolloart.com Contact: Philippa Found, Gallery Director, +44 (0)207 580 0020 info@rolloart.com

Exhibition Curator: Philippa Found is Gallery Director of ROLLO Contemporary Art. Her area of interest is women’s art and the body in contemporary art. She graduated from the University of Warwick where she specialised in the Representation of the Body in Contemporary Art, 1970 - 2000.

Found has curated exhibitions at ROLLO Contemporary Art, the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2006), The Arts Club, London (2007), and organised major art installation projects in collaboration with Selfridges, London (2008).

Found is keen to provide an academic context at ROLLO Contemporary Art by programming exhibitions which examine key themes in contemporary practice, especially focused on the representation of female artists.