WORLD WOMEN'S MONTH.
In celebration of world women's month and celebrated every March to coincide with International Women's Day on March 8. ... to commemorate the history of women's impact in the world and to raise awareness of issues women are facing worldwide, International Women's Day was established to commemorate the movement for women's rights. This month we address this by works created by all genders, from artists around the world using a multitude of materials and forms. We have loved seeing the work and the interpretation of “Woman”..
Artist name: LCCory
Title: I Wanna be Like Toots
Media: Paper collage
Description: This Nat Geo image of Toots impressed me beyond any imagery of powerful women in the media today. This is what female strength looks like to me; skirt hitched and hands dirty. The native flora symbolises the beauty of what she represents to me. I'm making collages during lockdown to overcome the challenge of losing a silent, private headspace to write at home.
Instagram: @lccory
Artist name: Sadie Downing
Title: Empowering Venus
Media: performance/photography
Description: Unlike traditional paintings of the submissive nude of the time, Olympia challenges the viewer with her strong hand placement and direct gaze. But was Manet just using her for attention? The idea behind 'Empowering Venus' was that by placing the hand over your vagina, you are giving the power back to the women who were painted for the male gaze.
Instagram: @stateofsadie
Artist name: Scott Lee Freeland
Title: Eartha Kitt
Media: Screenprint
Description: The image is a portrait of Eartha Kitt and is about her struggles of being both an actress and an activist. The earing references a conceptual sculpture that I am currently working on that reflects the difficulties that she faced. This screenprint is part of a wider project 'Don't Judge Me' that includes women that have been misjudged or overlooked and deserve greater acclaim.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scottslf180/
Artist name: Kevin Lycett
Title: Penelope and her suitors
Media: Acrylic on mdf board
Description: Penelope awaits the return of Odysseus. Their palace over-run with importunate suitors, all with an eye on the main game. They behave like beasts, supremely confident of their charms. Penelope has other ideas. I have never had to repaint anything as much as I had to in order to get Penelope right; disdain, elegance, anger and pride. The creepy men were easy.
Instagram: /kevin.lycett
Artist name: Lorraine Cleary
Title: Lady Caterpillar
Media: Sculptural Installation incorporating found domestic objects & layers of hand stitched textiles up-cycled from used women's garments
Description: Victims of abuse have difficulty in navigating the perils of the domestic space; where within its perimeter the protection offered is just an illusion and instead of a safe haven its inhabitants are filled with distress and torment and forced to participate as unwilling protagonists in everyday nightmares
Lady Caterpillar is fashioned from suffocating layers of hand-stitched fabric constructed from up-cycled female clothes; these layers are suspended from two crisscrossed mops emulating a puppeteers control over its puppet; the puppet acts as a metaphor for the control the abuser has over their victim.
Lady Caterpillar reflects on the strength and endurance of a woman as she overcomes oppression on a daily basis, with each layer she gets stronger shedding her patriarchal constraints, the caterpillar symbolizes that journey to freedom, just as the caterpillar leaves its cocoon to become a butterfly so too does the female battling ongoing coercion and control to take ownership over her own life.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lorraineclearystudio/
Artist name: Tamir David
Title: Pearls
Media: Graphite on paper
Description: The image of a woman as goddess warrior mother and an individual is the subject of this work
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tamirdav/
Artist name: Melanie Jordan
Title: The Troops of Maternal Concern
Media: Sculpture and textile
Description: My artwork explores the subject of maternal ambivalence in relation to being a mother of a dependent adult, which is my personal situation. This piece focuses on the repetitive conversations with my son, and my own thoughts and words to fill the treasured lulls in such tedious exchanges.
Instagram: meljordan6936
Artist name: Einat lev ari
Title: Contactctless by default
Media: Mixed technique
Description: A dress code exists in closed societies, sects and in religious communities. Any attempt to determine irrational clothing patterns, for example in Israel where, girls are forbidden to come to school with shorts and boys are allowed, has psychological consequences, social oppression and indicates that we are an object. We will dress and embellish ourselves as we see fit, you can look, but not touch.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/einat_lev_ari/
Artist name: Bianca Severijns
Title: Thou Shalt not Kill - Protective Blanket Series 2020
Media: Hand-torn paper, acrylic, Konjac glue, thread, textile
Description: . I dedicate this protective blanket to the memory of all the women and girls’ victims of femicide. I asked myself, how can I, as an artist, help raise awareness of this horrifying situation of femicide. The murder of females based on their gender is certainly not a recent issue although the term “femicide” was coined only in 1976. The Protective Blanket title “Thou Shalt Not Kill” refers to the 6th biblical commandment. The circle patterns used in the blanket symbolize the deep isolation feeling of battered women. My choice of intensely bright colors is to contrast between newlyweds beginning under an optimistic blanket of happiness, love, trust, and glorious intentions to the ironically tragic realization of the wedding vow “till death do us part”. A wonderful aspect of the Protective Blankets lay in the reciprocity that appeals to us as social beings, we can give a protective blanket or receive it. My personal frustration, hope, and wish is that every female in need will receive social and legal blanket-like protection from abuse and femicide.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bianca_severijns_paper_artist/?hl=en
Artist name: Dominika
Title: Masnica
Media: graphite and acrylic paint on paper
Description: This image is a self-portrait, featuring my current self surrounded by my younger selves, in a cave-like enclosure of a womb. It symbolises healing of the feminine essence through intimate connection to the womb, the seat of feminine power. The womb-cave is shaped like a flower or the holy grail, symbolising the sacred feminine.
Instagram: @dmasnica
Artist name: ANGELA FOX
Title: The Class of 78
Media: Red Letraset on an original Playboy magazine
Description: It was difficult growing up as a female in the 70s. Images of gender exploitation surrounded and suffocated.
Using an original Playboy magazine cover from 1978, the idea of this piece was to obliterate the scantily clad woman who herself contributed alongside men to degrade women . I chose to cover her with positive images of female astronauts who were all members of NASA'S Class of 78 and who paved the way for many female astronauts in future years.
My main obstacle, surprisingly, was trying to purchase original 1970s 'girlie mags' a title which they known by in the 70's.
Instagram: angfoxart
Artist name: Alexandra Buxbaum
Title: Woman on Balcony
Media: Photography
Description: Older women of colour are not proportionately represented in advertising, mainstream media, and even social justice movements. They face the triple whammy of racism, sexism, and ageism, and a significant portion live near or in poverty. In a youth obsessed society where physical appearance matters more for women, they get pushed aside and become invisible. Their myriad contributions are large but are often ignored. These older women of colour are often the glue that hold their families together, help raise grandchildren, and have spent their lives caring for others often at their own expense. I am hoping that “Women’s History Month” will be an opportunity to bring these women to the forefront and celebrate their contributions and begin a dialogue to make some positive changes to help support one of society’s more marginalized populations.
Instagram: @buxbaumphoto
Artist name: Alexandra Holownia
Title: Puppets
Media: Photo on metal
Description: The photo of the puppet installations depicting the artistic figure of Alexander Fly has been digitally processed and mirrored on metal. Alexander Fly dolls are the alter ego of an artistic figure fighting for women's rights, dealing with the issue of determination of women seeking release from traditional sexual roles and existing ideas of beauty .
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexandraholownia/?hl=de
Artist name: Ameana Alessandri
Title: Strong BAME Women in the NHS
Media: Acrylic on canvas board
Description: In this series inspired by the poster “We can do it” aka Rosie the Riveter, Ameana Alessandri has created a series of work (on going) to celebrate the many strong BAME women within the NHS workforce. The NHS workforce is made up of a diverse community. However, like many other organisations, there are also some inequalities that are embedded within the NHS. In order to gain insight into the thoughts of other NHS workers, Alessandri has requested her colleagues to be her muses and tell the story of their background, and the challenges they have faced as women, also being a part of an ethnic minority. Using an urban style to-accentuate the strength of the women as NHS workers, the series is constituted of 6 pieces, which are available on request.
Instagram: @ameanaalessandri
Artist: Heidi Wenyon
Title: Small Histories
Media: Acrylic paintings plus videobook
Description: Small Histories consists of nine portraits of buttons that tell the stories of nine different women. They encapsulate memories of friendship, love, family, motherhood, fashion, and they are symbols of our shared human experience. I made the work during lockdown and it's part of my art and design BA graduation project. The stories behind the buttons appear in the accompanying videobook at https://www.heidiwenyon.com/current-work
Instagram: @heidiwenyon
Artist name: Sève Favre
Title: Goliarda/Modesta
Media: Mixed media on paper and canvas
Description: This work is dedicated to the Italian author Goliarda Sapienza. This woman wrote the book "The Art of Joy" which she did not manage to get published during her lifetime. It was rejected everywhere because the novel was considered far too avant-garde and scandalous in its presentation of the woman and the pitfalls that her heroine Modesta meets. In this work, I have presented The Author and his Heroine as being double of each other, in the manner of playing cards (queen of hearts/tile or queen of spades/clover), we do not know exactly who is one and who is the other. They seem interchangeable, twinned, in an inseparable continuum.
Instagram: @sevefavrehttps://www.instagram.com/sevefavre/
Artist name: Romina Belda
Title: Absence
Media: Photography
Description: This photograph shows my family’s land in the south of Spain and my mother, who devoted herself to its maintenance up until she sold the property due to economic struggle.
The land had belonged to my family since the beginning of the past century, my grandparents worked mainly in an orchard of palm trees, branching them, tending them, and climbing them to harvest the dates. I spent many days and weeks on the homeland growing up, watching what could come from human effort; what the land gave and what it withheld from the people who worked it.
My mother dedicated herself to its care and to its sense of community and belonging.
This image speaks of heritage, roots, and women resistance; of absence and what always will remains. The land has a strong link to my roots and the meaningful sense I've got of nature comes from its ground.
Instagram: rominabelda
Artist name: Nurtane Karagil
Title: Baby
Media: Mixed media on paper
Description: This is a piece called "baby" from sticky things series that I started during my MA studies on 2012. The series based on human-generated inequalities, patriarchal administrations, environmental settings which are ridiculously alien to humanity, meaningless and result less investigations, unnecessary embargoes and limitations, and illogical, self-centred power politics that happens in the Cypriot community.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nurtane/
Artist name: Jesswoodart
Title: 'Hysterical Beauty' (2020)
Description: "I am rejecting femininity and the pressures it has caused upon women’s mental and physical wellbeing by having to be presented a certain way. Through the use of mimicking the beauty rituals we do in day-to-day life I create reanimated films made from pinhole photography. It is the representation of the mental instability, caused by those rituals we place upon ourselves, reclaiming the female body so it isn’t just a muse and deflecting the male gaze."
Instagram: Jesswoodart
Artist name: Anita Owsianna
Title: Flaw V
Media: acrylic on canvas
Description: 140 x 100 cm Flaw from DEFECT series, are my response to the disability of the body, the image. Femininity identified with delicacy, beauty, tenderness and pinkness. Really, it's strong. Flaws are the definition my femininity and dilemmas associated with it. It is uncertainty and power expressed through decisive action. It's not always pinky. And there is power in delicacy.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anitaowsia_n_n_a/
Artist name: Sève Favre
Title: Virginia: The Words to Say
Media: mixed media on paper and wood
Description: In The Early Journals, Virginia Woolf wrote: « The inner life has its soft and gentle beauty; an abstract formlessness as well as a subtle charm.
I often consider myself as a figure in a foggy painting: faltering lines, insecure distances, and a merging of greys and blacks.
An emotion or a mood, a mere wisp of color, is shaded off and made to spread until it becomes one with all that surrounds it. »
- Virginia Woolf, A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals 1897- 1909.
Instagram: @sevefavre
Artist name: Patrice Sullivan
Title: Mom with children
Media: Oil on wood
Description: Mom's are handling a lot during this crisis. I have been working on family dynamics (autobiographic) for many years, understanding the delicate balance between mothers, fathers and siblings that have far-reaching effects. I started this piece on a very small scale, 5" x 6", showing the mother surrounded by children who need her.
Instagram: patricesullivan
Artist name: Alice Suret-Canale
Title: Clichés et Probabilités n°1
Media: Acrylic and oil on unstretched linen canvas
Description: The underlying subject, largely autobiographical, of this piece is that of gestation; maternal gestation ‒pregnancy and the revolutions it generates in the body of the future mother and in the intimacy of the couple‒ is linked to pictorial gestation, movements and transformations of the painted space, patterns and figures. The large format of it was quite a challenge for me, as it was the first time that I had tackled a 2m20x2m40 painting.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alicesuretcanale/
Artist name: Louisa Pankhurst Johnson
Title: 'Celebrating Votes For Women'
Media: Mixed Media
Description: My Great Great Great Aunt was Emmeline Pankhurst.
"My mums, mums dad was her brother & he kept all the monies raised under his bed for safekeeping for the suffrage movement" I have created mixed medias comprising of items from the Women's Suffragette Movement including a letter written in Holloway prison, highlighting the suffrage that many women tirelessly, selflessly & putting themselves through peril for future generations and our human rights and equality. What is more uncommonly known is that after winning 'The Vote for Women' the Suffragettes were not permitted to return to University and study as they now had criminal records.
Many of the Suffragettes suffered greatly with being imprisoned especially the last time; Emmeline was imprisoned for nine months and her health was in great decline she was not alone after winning the vote; therefore I think it is imperative we all are aware of the great sacrifice these heroic men & women made & that all women pursue "following their dreams".
Instagram: https://www.louisajohnsonvisualpoet.com/ https://www.instagram.com/louisa_pankhurst_johnson_art/
