Action, Gesture, Performance: Feminism, the Body and Abstraction

Sister exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery to their main show on female abstract expressionist painters looking at women artists who use their bodies to express similar themes.

Taking the dancer Martha Graham as a starting point, the show used film and photographs to highlight performance art by women. After the colour of the previous show I found it hard to calm my brain down to these small black and white works but there were some interesting projects I will look out for.

I liked this work by Annegret Soltau in which, over 6 prints, a photo of her was obliterated with gestural brushstrokes. It could have been a metaphor for the women in the previous show. My favourite was Niki de Saint Phall’s “Shooting Pictures” where she hung balloons of pigment on a painting then shot them. This was shown via a Pathe Film of her.

Closed 7 May 2023

 

 

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