The American Feminist artist Judy Chicago will open an exhibition of historic works at Riflemaker on 14 September. Star Cunts & other attractions will include suites of paintings and sculptures from the beginning of Chicago’s career as well as from her significant body of multidisciplinary art. The exhibition features the eponymous STAR CUNTS series (1969), a set of prismacolour and pastels on paper, plus sets of steel and acrylic dome sculptures – representative of the influence of minimalism on Chicago’s early style, but also indicative of the appropriation of materials that would later define her work. Also on show for the first time are unseen porcelain test plates, which chronicle Chicago’s study of china painting in preparation for The DINNER PARTY the 1979 installation now permanently housed in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where it is accounts for more than 20% of the museum’s visitor figures. In Janson & Janson’s publication A Basic History of Western Art, THE DINNER PARTY is credited as a “commentary on contemporary society, and use of so many different styles and periods announces the art of the 1980s, and art that still prevails today and has come to be called Post-Modernism.”
Judy Chicago is an artist, writer and activist whose work has set the agenda for women’s art over the past five decades. An instrumental force who came to prominence during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, she helped re-shape the male-dominated art landscape by creating innovative work from a woman’s perspective – reacting to social and political injustice during revolutionary times.
Her art and her ideas continue to exert a palpable influence on generations of women and male artists who came after her. In 2011, her contribution was recognised and in some ways rediscovered during Pacific Standard Time, the California-wide celebration of the history of the L.A. Art Scene which saw sixty cultural institutions collaborate in one six-month long initiative (pacificstandardtime.org/) and featured work across various media by Judy Chicago. The artist is widely represented in museums and public collections worldwide. In, 2012, Chicago returned to London for the first time since 1985, with two major retrospective exhibitions. The following year she was the only living female artist selected for the Spotlight category at Frieze Masters and in 2014, Chicago marked her 75th birthday with a series of exhibitions, events and publications that took place across the U.S. overarching the trajectory of her 50 year career.
2015 marks an important year for the artist, as Star Cunts and Other Attractions will coincide with Chicago’s involvement in The World Goes Pop exhibition, opening on 17 September at Tate Modern (curated by Jessica Morgan and Flavia Frigeri), where the artist will exhibit her iconic Car Hood series from the mid-1960s. The exhibition marks the first occasion that the series has been shown together – contributing to the global story of pop art and how it came to be a subversive international language of protest.
Outside of the U.K, Chicago is currently part of Gender in Art at the MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow. In Milan, she is involved in two group shows: the Triennale di Milano museum is currently exhibiting her work in Arts & Foods, curated by the art historian Germano Celant as an official satellite pavilion of the Milan Expo and in August, her work will be on display in The Great Mother at the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Why Not Judy Chicago? an exhibition organised by the Azkuna Center and CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux and Curated by Xabier Arakistain will open in Azkuna Center, Bilbao in October. The exhibition will travel to the CAPC the following March.
Birth Hood © Judy Chicago/Riflemaker, 1965 (finished 2011), sprayed acrylic on car hood, 42.9 in. x 42.9 in. x 4.3 in, photo © Donald Woodman
Bigamy Hood © Judy Chicago/Riflemaker, 1965 (finished 2011), sprayed acrylic on car hood, 42.9 in. x 42.9 in. x 4.3 in, photo © Donald Woodman
Pioneering Feminist artist Judy Chicago exhibits unseen archival work
14 SEPTEMBER – 31 DECEMBER 2015 Pioneering Feminist artist Judy Chicago exhibits unseen archival work Rifelmaker Gallery