UK Exhibitions by Women

Plates is based on field work undertaken in Ethiopia and Northern Ireland by artist Rachel Pimm  with a soundtrack by Lori E. Allen. For this commission, the artists create a visual and sonic topography with words, images and sounds that have been collected from an archive of self-similar images of biological, geological and physical matter. The space becomes an index of ‘plates’, representing materials located around volcanic landscapes such as the Giants Causeway (Northern Ireland) and the Afar Triangle (Ethiopia), geological sites…

Penelope Haralambidou's project 'City of Ladies' studies 'The Book of the City of Ladies', 1405, by Italian/French medieval author Christine de Pizan (1364 – c.1430). The text is part of a compilation assembled for Queen Isabeau of Bavaria between 1410 – 1414 (Harley MS 4431) the largest surviving collected manuscript of her works and one of the foundation manuscripts at the British Library.  'City of Ladies' focuses on the under–researched significance of the architectural and urban allegory portrayed in Pizan's…

A major retrospective of Linda McCartney’s photography is presented. From her iconic depictions of the music scene of the 1960s, to family life with Paul, Linda captured her whole world on film. The exhibition features more than 200 extraordinary images that reveal what a prolific photographer Linda was, and how her love for the natural world, her surreal sense of humour, and an exceptional eye for capturing the spontaneous, gave her work an inimitable style.

This exhibition is a rare chance to experience two of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms. These immersive installations will transport you into Kusama’s unique vision of endless reflections. Infinity Mirrored Room – Filled with the Brilliance of Life is one of Kusama’s largest installations to date and was made for her 2012 retrospective at the gallery. It is shown alongside Chandelier of Grief, a room which creates the illusion of a boundless universe of rotating crystal chandeliers.  A small presentation of photographs –…

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is an artist and writer acclaimed for her enigmatic portraits of fictitious people. This exhibition brings together around 80 paintings and works on paper from 2003 to the present day in the most extensive survey of the artist’s career to date.  The figures in Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings are not real people – she creates them from found images and her own imagination. Both familiar and mysterious, they invite viewers to project their own interpretations, and raise important questions of identity…

The exhibition, Painting with Light, explores the painterly quality of Ming Smith’s photographic work. It contains works from the start of the 1970s to the present day, including a number of never before seen archival prints.  Photographs were taken in the New York neighbourhoods of Coney Island and Harlem, to the cities of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and Gambela, Ethiopia.  The exhibition reflects the diversity of Smith’s personal experience, the openness of her perspective and her embrace of subjectivity as a fundamental…

Huma Bhabha’s work draws on wide ranging sources: from art historical references including Classicism and Cubism, to popular culture with influences such as sci-fi, comic books and horror films. Her sculptural assemblages comprise found materials such as Styrofoam, clay, wire, cork, animal bones and wood; hand-carved figures, heads and limbs combine architectural elements and armatures. Bhabha’s multifaceted work explores colonialism, war, displacement and the memory of home. For her first major survey exhibition in Europe.

The Making of Husbands is a major exhibition that brings together works by Christina Ramberg (1946–1995), her contemporaries and younger artists to explore the urgency with which her work speaks to the current debate around gender and identity. Artists include: Alexandra Bircken, Gaylen Gerber, Allen Jones, Konrad Klapheck, Ghislaine Leung, Hans Christian Lotz, Senga Nengudi, Ana Pellicer, Charlotte Posenenske, Richard Rezac, Diane Simpson, Terre Thaemlitz, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger and Kathleen White. The exhibition reveals Ramberg’s understanding of the body as deeply…

This is a major exhibition of existing and new work by South Korean artist Haegue Yang, who is renowned for her vast and non-binary artistic languages. The materiality and aesthetics of her work are derived from her inventive methods, from using industrial and everyday materials to labour-intensive and craft-based procedures that create creature-like sculptures. The resulting environment is often immersive and charged with an energy that weaves together enlightenment and mysticism

The exhibition Common Thread brings together a group of artists: Jodie Carey, Mark Corfield-Moore,  Ayan Farah, David Murphy, Isobel Napier, Amy Revier, Sophie Rowley and Katharine Swailes, each persons work focuses on the history of textile technology and design, and their shifting values for people across place and time. They explore the ways which certain textile producing technologies are still in effect, while others are being challenged.  The works in this exhibition reflect on the place of textiles both in art, and in contemporary society.

Alice Neel's artistic works are presented in, There’s still another I see, an exhibition that focuses for the first time on pairings of Neel’s paintings of the same sitter.

An exhibition of new work by María Berrío., shows her large-scale works, which are meticulously crafted from layers of Japanese paper.  They often reflect on cross-cultural connections and global migration seen through the prism of her own history. The central theme of this exhibition is the quiet of catastrophe’s aftermath, a solemnity that points as much towards modes of resilience and adaptation as it does to the crushing devastation of loss.  

Ella Kruglyanskaya displays her deeply original streak— part-rebellious, part-classicist—and continues her focus on the gendered and expressionistic histories of painting albeit with a more personal and introspective drive. The exhibition takes the form of a continuous collage in two parts across both gallery spaces. Each includes a profusion of works on canvas, egg tempera panels and works on paper, unpacking the traditions of portraiture, still-life, trompe l’oeil and the memento mori, scrutinising her own artistic output throughout. This is a…

In the 1960s and 70s, the Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz created radical sculptures from woven fibre. They were soft not hard; ambiguous and organic; towering works that hung from the ceiling and pioneered a new form of installation. They became known as The Abakans. This exhibition presents a rare opportunity to explore this extraordinary body of work. Many of the most significant Abakans will be brought together in a forest-like display in a 64-metre long gallery space.  It examines this transformative period of Abakanowicz’s practice when…

Ewa Juszkiewicz's portraits recall paintings by Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Joseph Van Lerius, and Joseph Wright, sending us into a world that is both classical and surrealist. By covering female faces and displaying their transfiguration, Juszkiewicz revitalizes Art History through a unique language. In her paintings, the sitter’s poses are familiar, but the intention is radically new.

Sandra Monterosso's work brings deep-rooted indigenous culture and belief out of the margins and into the contemporary art canon. She explores her ancestry and the boundaries of her mixed identity through physical references to tradition and memory, which underlines that Mayan culture, community and practice exist today. Dyed in Wool showcases her recent work in textiles, focusing on works produced from dyeing practices deeply embedded in the Mayan community.

Heather Phillipson's large-scale immersive art work is the exciting new commission for 2020.  It will occupy the grand spaces of the Duveen Galleries at the heart of the building.

Celia Paul’s art is founded on deep connections, and in My Studio, paintings of the past few months, the artist  focusses on her home and studio, a place that sits at the very heart of Paul’s enquiry into the complexities of interior and exterior life, constancy and change. Subjects include its familiar fixtures and sparse furnishings, transfigured by changing light, and London landmarks visible from its windows.