Opening reception: Thursday 5 October from 6-8PM
PIERMARQ* is pleased to present Beware the Quiet Woman, an exhibition of new work by UK based artist, Galina Munroe. This is the artist’s 5th solo exhibition at PIERMARQ* in Sydney.
“Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at,” writes John Berger in the influential collection of essays, Ways of Seeing, published in 1972. Berger’s revolutionary concept of the male gaze describes not only most relations between men and women, but also the relation of women to themselves. Berger goes on to explain, “The surveyor of woman in herself is male…thus she turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of vision: a sight". In 14 works of oil and collage on canvas, Munroe conceives a new way of activating the portrayal of female figures, on and behind the canvas, exploring themes of the body, nature personified, selfhood and color as portrait, nurturing her vision of womanhood.
Replete with complexities, realness, beauty, complications and joy with emphasis on recurring floral shapes and opaque layers of color, Munroe’s paintings investigate the history of art made by women, as well as art made under the influence of feminism. Questioning the male gaze, she nurtures and discovers a deeper, personal, female gaze. For Munroe, each portrait recalls Emory Hall’s poem “I have been a thousand different women.” Acting as storytellers for the everyday, her figures are both soft and bold, transcribing messages of womanhood and deep emotions, made of thousands of tiny gestures, compassion and love, exploring the boundaries and vulnerabilities of an organic, feminine nature.
Within Beware the Quiet Woman, portraits like La Veilleuse are in conversation with still life vessels accompanied by bright overflowing flowers, such as Post Rain Roses. These pairings reference still life painting of the 19th and 20th century, as female artist’s ‘appropriately dedicated environment’ - with each still life reflecting upon Berger’s idea that “she turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of vision,” opening a dialogue around how women perceive themselves and how they are perceived by others, commonly as objects through the heavily imprinted, standardised male gaze.
Born in 1993, Galina Munroe is a British-French artist, living and working in Norfolk, UK. Munroe has exhibited internationally across Europe and The US, including London, Berlin, Cologne, Copenhagen and Milan.
