Women In Art

Women In Art 2018-2022

What is the role of women in art? Why are they so often depicted naked and without context?

This series of interventions interrogates the historical positioning of women within Art and Design — as subject, muse, ornament, and absence. It questions the persistent imbalance between representation and authorship, and the enduring tendency to frame women’s bodies as aesthetic objects divorced from narrative agency.

Developed over four years — extended by the disruption of COVID-19 — the project unfolded across major art galleries in five European cities. Each site became both context and catalyst for investigation.

For every city visited, a mini-series of prints was produced.These prints were installed not in the main exhibition spaces, but in the gallery toilets. This gesture was deliberate: a quiet but pointed intervention acknowledging that, in many institutions, there are often more women employed cleaning the facilities than women represented on the walls as artists.

By relocating the work to these overlooked spaces, the project reframed questions of visibility, labour, value, and authorship — asking who is seen, who is hidden, and who maintains the structures that sustain cultural institutions.

An original musical score was composed for the series by Duncan O Cleirigh, each composition responding to the thematic concerns of the individual interventions. His work further extends the dialogue between visibility, presence, and voice.