A new exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre, developed in partnership with the Fleming Collection, serves as a ‘curatorial corrective’ for the historic absence of women artists in academic narratives and artistic institutions.
Scottish Women Artists Transforming Tradition brings together exciting historical, modern and contemporary works from the Fleming Collection that span over one hundred years of social transformation, innovation and individualism. Mid-twentieth century greats, such as Joan Eardley, Margot Sandeman and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, are displayed alongside their peers, artistic forbears and those they inspired, to communicate the dynamic tensions and creative synergies that have influenced successive generations of Scottish artists.
This exhibition presents fifty engaging works, which address a wide and eclectic range of themes. Scottish Women Artists focuses on paintings, drawings, assemblages and photography that explore human relationships, encounters with places, structural forms and recognisable objects. In this way, traditional genres such as the still life, landscape and portraiture are reinvigorated by the artists’ imaginative treatment of familiar subject matter. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the radical new co-educational programmes offered by Scottish institutions presented women with the opportunity to develop as
In partnership with professional artists. After training in Scotland many artists forged their own distinct paths, drawing strength and support from the life-long friendships that they formed at art school or within the artist colonies of Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and Galloway, Catterline in Aberdeenshire, and further afield in St Ives, Cornwall.
Selected from the Fleming Collection’s extensive holdings of Scottish art, and supplemented by further loans, this exhibition celebrates the professional careers of over thirty artists, who have received honours and commendations for the quality of their work and their outstanding contribution to the arts. By foregrounding works by Annie French and Phoebe Anna Traquair to Caroline Walker and Sekai Machache, Scottish Women Artists aspires to serve as a ‘curatorial corrective’ for the historic absence of women artists in academic narratives and artistic institutions due to outdated gender-based assumptions.
“Since its inception in 1968, the Fleming Collection has been unusual in recognising the importance of women artists to the story of Scottish art, when key works by Joan Eardley, Anne Redpath and other mid-century greats were acquired. This groundbreaking show brings that story up-to-date with the triumph of contemporary artists on the international stage bringing to the fore the continuum of female talent and innovation that has powered Scotland’s art.” – James Knox, Director of the Fleming Collection.
Scottish Women Artists Transforming Tradition.
9 April – 3 July 2022.
Tickets £9/£8 concessions.
Visit sainsburycentre.ac.uk or call 01603 593199 (Monday–Friday, 9am–5pm).
Like the sound of this?
Explore our Culture in Norwich section for more ideas and things to visit, see and do.
