Where are all the women?

lilyjclifford
Jul 28, 2017
2 min read

So I was in need of an academic moral boost and decided to re-read my dissertation. I love essays, when I first started invigilating in the gallery I would write essays with titles like 'The relationship between craft and literature' and 'How spectacle design fit into the landscape of modern glass'.

Re-reading this five year old essay (To what extent have depictions of Jesus impacted modern figurative sculpture?) I was shocked to realise that apart from a handful of women artists I didn't make any mention of women. I remember doing a deal of research into representations of women in ecclesiastical art and yet none of it made the cut. I'd not made any mention of female artists earlier than 1960 and not one reference to female reactions or critics. I'm a little bit appalled in past me, and have no excuse as why that would have happened.

In my second year I made my first figurative sculptures, they were called 'Original Women' and looked at different origin myths of women who were made from clay. Igbo goddess Ala, the Torah's Lillith and Wonder Woman. They appealed to me for having no father, they're all really strong and unapologetic. They're proto-feminists. Then in my third year I wanted to make my work more serious, so that meant male. I didn't think about it too much, the figures I made were un-gendered, but I called them Men of Doubt so who was I kidding?

After I read through my dissertation and dealt with my guilt I decided to make a sculpture, she would be a woman. I'd just had the luck of doing some life drawing with a pregnant model (all life models should be pregnant, if I ever pass a law it will be this one and all art colleges will curse me) so used some of the sketches I'd made and threw her together. The weird thing was that when I'd usually say declare that I was done I looked at this little woman and started making her shiny. I stuck pearls on her, sequins, glitter, painted her shimmering colours and gave her a plume of embroidery thread to comb. If I'd had molten gold I'd have dipped her in it.