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After over a year of research, presentations, round-table discussions, studio visits and meetings with curators, institutions, gallery owners and self-organized collectives we have now evaluated our findings and what we believe is the best way to move forward. A short summary follows, a longer can be found here and if you would like a full report and/or have us present our findings in a public event please contact us.
Summary of conclusion and moving forward:
Through sculptureHUB we got a first hand insight in how women sculptors perceive their current situation in the Nordic (and N.Y. City) art world today. It soon became clear that the situation is much more complex than the obvious number crunching of male v.s female artists shown and represented in galleries, institutions and public commissions ( it is in the Nordic cities still only about 35% female and 65% male with some variations).
Since the long term plan was to stage an all-women group show, we asked all artists we met with in group discussions, portfolio days or in studio visits if they thought an all-women exhibition was a good strategy for making women sculptors more visible and secondly if they themselves would want to participate in such an exhibition? The discussions we had in all Nordic countries as well as in New York City, surrounding all-women shows where always vivid, engaging and extremely opinionated.
As the project progressed it became clear that the real inequality and need was actually in the lack of solo opportunities for women sculptors. Venues often had no issue with staging all women group shows or even including a majority of women artists in group exhibitions but when it came to giving women artists solo exhibitions it was a completely different story. The importance of solo exhibitions for an artist career can not be overstated. But for being a signifier of professional achievement, solo exhibitions also provides important visibility and publicity that in turn promotes future opportunities.
It has become clear that to provide real visibility and value for women sculptors we should instead of staging another women group exhibition, up the ante and work towards convincing a well established exhibition venue to agree to dedicate one full exhibition year to stage 7 solo shows by women sculptors. SculptureCenter in Long Island City is a forerunner in the field with all of their solo exhibitions during 2016 being dedicated to women artists. Let´s see if we can get a Nordic venue to agree to do the same.
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We would like to express our gratitude to everyone that has met with us and so generously shared their work, ideas and reflections upon the subject with us. We would also like to thank the organisations that generously have collaborated with us; HIAP- Helsinki, Tenthaus Oslo, NLHSpace Copenhagen , Gallery Box, Göteborg, Akademi Valand - Gothenburg University, Göteborgs Konsthall and Röda Sten Art Center.
And we are grateful for the financial support from our main funder the Nordic Culture Point and Göteborg Stads Kultur for their support in the Sculpture Talk series, Längmanska Art Foundation, SWEA North Carolina, IASPIS and Helge: AX Johnsson Foundation.
Thank you!
