Pictorum Gallery presents its inaugural exhibition featuring female abstract artists

Pictorum Gallery London opened its inaugural exhibition with a private viewing of the work of six female abstract artists, at London’s 34 Great Titchfield Street, on 1 December. The exhibition, titled Taking a Broom to the Wasp’s Nest, showcases the work of six exceptional contemporary artists: Jo Dennis, Kim Booker, Lydia Hamblet, Rhiannon Salisbury, Sunyoung Hwang and Yaya Yajie Liang.

Gallery director and curator Josephine May Bailey told Tempus: “The title of the exhibition is taken from the poem Abstract by Connie Wanek, and touches on a sense of urgency and movement – responding directly to both the formal elements of the artists’ works and the wider art historical context that they exist within.”

Josephine’s vision for Pictorum Gallery London is to put the spotlight on emerging and contemporary artists, while challenging the status quo when it comes to what viewers may traditionally expect from different genres.

“Throughout art history, abstract painting has been supposedly dominated by men, and largely remembered as a movement defined by the paint-slinging, hard-drinking machismo of its poster boys such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. The women who helped define and push the movement forward have consequently fallen out of the spotlight, reduced to titles such as ‘wife of’ or ‘disciple’,” says Josephine. 

She explains that, according to popular art history, it was Wassily Kandisnsky (1866 – 1944) who birthed the movement through his work Untitled (1910), paving the way for male artists such as Rothko, de Kooning, Pollock, and Mondrian to dominate. However, it was in fact the female Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) who created the first abstract compositions in 1905 – five years before the so-called “father of abstraction”, Kandinsky, rose to prominence. 

“Klint’s work, alongside other pioneering women artists such as Agnes Martin, are testament to the powerful backdrop of women who heavily influence abstract artists today,” she says. 

“Taking a Broom to the Wasp’s Nest tracks seven artist’s unique contemporary interpretation of ‘abstract’, while placing them firmly within their feminist art historical context. The exhibition highlights the fluidity, individuality, and freedom inherent in abstraction, regardless of gender, presenting the vastness of what can be considered abstract.”

Taking a Broom to the Wasps’ Nest runs from 1- 21 December 2022. 

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