Wonderful paintings from Caroline Walker. Wish I was a bit nearer.
‘The subject of my paintings in its broadest sense is women’s experience, whether that is the imagined interior life of a glimpsed shop worker, a closely observed portrayal of my mother working in the family home, or women I’ve had the privilege of spending time with, in their place of work. From the anonymous to the highly personal, what links all these subjects is an investigation of an experience which is specifically female.’ Caroline Walker
https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/caroline-walker/
'In this fashion, Walker has established herself over the past decade both as one of her generation’s most formally rigorous and imaginative figurative painters, and among the most compelling contemporary voices on the nature and significance of what, historically, has been called ‘women’s work’. These two sides of her success are mutually reinforcing. One definition of women’s work might be the jobs done by women that usually go unnoticed – whether that’s caregiving, domestic chores or, in Walker’s more up-to-date reckoning, biochemistry or surgery. One definition of painting might be that it is an extended act of noticing. When I ask Walker about the politics in her paintings, the word she uses is ‘gentle’. Like so much else, it seems carefully chosen. '
https://apollo-magazine.com/caroline-walker-interview/
AND Helen Chadwick retrospective is on at the same time.
https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/helen-chadwick-life-pleasures/
'Chadwick’s experiments across mediums were innovative and unconventional; typically combining aesthetic beauty with an alliance of unusual, often grotesque materials. She consistently expressed a feminist perspective steeped in humour, and employed a vast range of materials in unexpected ways, incorporating bodily fluids, meat, flowers, chocolate and compost into her works. Through her skilled use of traditional fabrication methods and sophisticated technologies, she quickly established herself as a leading figure amongst Britain’s post-war avant-garde, becoming one of the first women artists to be nominated for the Turner Prize in 1987.'