ILEANA is delighted to announce the opening of its gallery space in November. Located on Brunswick St in the heart of New Farm, the gallery will be a platform for selling exhibitions of international contemporary art in Australia.
The first exhibition, titled ‘Great Ladies’, will present a group of historically important female artists from Europe and the United States, including Judy Chicago, Cindy Sherman, Louise Bourgeois and Bridget Riley.
Freely translated from the French grandes dames, ‘Great Ladies’ is the title of an important body of work that pioneering feminist artist Judy Chicago produced in the early 1970s. In these abstract paintings, she explored important female figures who had been marginalised in historical accounts because of their gender, and her extensive research into these subjects culminated in her now iconic The Dinner Party installation (1974-79).
Just as the subjects of Judy Chicago’s work had been written out of mainstream historical narratives, so she herself, along with most of her female contemporaries, struggled to gain levels of recognition similar to her male counterparts. Only in recent years has the marginalisation of female artists been recognised more consistently, and at the age of 80 years old, Judy Chicago was finally awarded the honour of a retrospective exhibition in 2020 (now postponed to 2021).
The inaugural exhibition ‘Great Ladies’ at ILEANA brings together some of the grandes dames of European and American contemporary art. Whilst some of the artists in the exhibition have had institutional recognition from an early age, others have long been ignored, or are better known for their work as assistants to famous male artists.
Address: 897b Brunswick Street, 4005 New Farm
