Freelands Foundation, London
Uniting the work of Jacqueline Donachie, Lis Rhodes and Veronica Ryan, this show demonstrates how dynamic art could be if only there were more women at work
Jacqueline Donachie’s An Era of Small Pleasures is based on those tiny moments of light relief parents experience when their children are young – maybe over a silent five-minute cup of coffee. But it is not relevant that the people that assisted Donachie in creating it were all women with young children. “They are artists” she emphasises, “it is coincidental”. And, even though the three participants in Donachie Rhodes Ryan at the Freelands Foundation appear because they received funding from the Freelands award as mid-career female practitioners, their gender is not relevant. They are artists; artists without the “female” prefix. There is no millennial pink here or a spangly sign, nor is there heavy-handed curatorial themes of “the body”, “domesticity” or “feminism”.
Donachie Rhodes Ryan unites Donachie, Lis Rhodes and Veronica Ryan, the first three women to receive the Freelands award since it was established in 2016. The £100,000 prize is presented to a gallery outside of London hoping to present a survey exhibition of a mid-career female artist who is yet to receive recognition, ringfencing £25,000 for the individual to produce a new work. This was a proactive response from the foundation who – after commissioning a report into how gender affects artistic career progression – discovered a large discrepancy between art students (66% female in 2018) and professional practitioners (68% male represented by top private London galleries in 2018). After the rush of emerging opportunities fade, “they just disappear” says Freelands Foundation creative director Henry Ward.
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