The Muses Behind the Masterpieces
Art aficionado or not, a gallery space is something many of us are familiar with. Does it bring comfort? Does it spark imagination? Is it a social activity? Antisocial? A hobby? Or an obligation? For me, it’s an escape.
When I entered art history academia, I was not a frequent gallery-goer. It came as a surprise to a fair few that my studies would be dedicated to a rigorous examination of the female nude in 19th and 20th-century France. Niche it was. But, then again, art history is one of the most expansive subjects out there. It pushes and tests boundaries, examines the past, the present and the future, is constantly reimagined.
I indulged in trips to Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Paris to see the thick brushstrokes of Edgar Degas and the richly, coloured oils of Pierre Bonnard. I drew a lengthy, feminist perspective on the trajectory of the water in bathtubs, the extortions of the bathing body; I assessed just why there were so many female bathers.
My academic days of footnoting and rifling through papers may be long over, but there’s no doubt that I’m still frightfully in flux about those bathers. My other preoccupation? The male-dominated agenda of our curriculum in those foundation years: our religious studying of E.H. Gombrich’s The Story of Art, with not a single female artist featured in the first edition. It baffled me that in a world inundated with art, creativity and imagination, London's National Gallery didn't host its first major solo exhibition dedicated to a female artist until the Artemisia Gentileschi show in 2020. Why did it take me so long to examine the fabulous works of Annie Albers, Barbara Kruger, Harriet Powers and Judy Chicago? And why was Jacqueline Marvel—an artist who pioneered Fauvism, brushing shoulders with the likes of Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso—only granted her first retrospective outside of France in 2024? The statistics are endless. And so are the gender disparities throughout the art market: that Forbes recorded a $192 billion pay gap between genders in art auctions is simply staggering.
Take a flick through Kate Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men and you see a compendium of a revised narrative. There are now terrific initiatives such as AWITA (Association of Women in the Arts) creating a female-driven platform for those pursuing a career in the visual arts, in a gallery space or as a curator, adviser or academic. Or, if you’re lucky enough, sit down and have a chat with art consultant Marina Cochrane, Christie’s Client Advisor Annabelle Scholar or the founders of VIV Arts, Carlota Dochao Naveira and Oliva Sartogo.
It’s then that you become all too aware that despite a still largely male-dominated sphere, the landscape is shifting. It is a subject intrinsically linked with reality. Marina’s involvement with the inauguration of Rele Gallery in London—a three-continent gallery spread championing African art—shows precisely this. Peju Alatise’s We Came With the Last Rain profoundly wove together Yoruba folklore and mythology with a narrative implored by a 9-year-old girl and, on extension, an Almajiri. It was through sculptural pieces created with various materials (wood, glass, stainless steel, copper auto base paints) that an overwhelming tale of resilience, identity and culture was conjured.
What makes Marina so remarkable is her drive. She attributes this to the four years she spent in vibrant Mexico City, a place that mediates her creativity. She “simply fell in love with everything.” The community, the dynamos, the culture, the nightlife. And it is a city pumping with ideas, where community spaces are rife and art is entwined with rich cultural identity. Marina puts it simply: while London is quite literally inundated with art, it’s also ever-so-slightly restrained by its institutional past. CDMX, however, has that edge, that enthusiasm and that space to grow. Take Museo Jumex's current exhibition, The Grotto by Clotilde Jiménez, as an example. Sound, video and performance transgress traditional aspects of theatre to produce an experimental opera divided into two acts. The result? An exceptional confrontation of migration, spirituality and autonomy.
That’s not to ignore London as an epicentre of art and design. With the Barbican presenting the largest institutional survey of Noah Davis to date this coming February and the National Portrait Gallery exhibiting the first major exhibition dedicated to the contemporary artist Jenny Saville in the summer of 2025, it’s an exciting agenda.
Indeed, London is where Carlota and Oliva have set up camp. It’s a city where people are not just interested in art but engaged by it. A place where people are “receptive to creative technologies.” Take one look at the upcoming Tate Modern exhibition Electric Dreams. A significant institution is responding to non-tangible, digital art. Is this what drove Carlota and Oliva to create VIV Arts, a digital art platform? Partly. It also stemmed from their desire to make a space in the commercial art world for this medium. To create a space to exhibit these wonderful, immersive experiences. One only needs to look at their launch event Controlled Burn by Julian Charrière. The walls of the Soho-situated Welsh Chapel became a cosmic journey; fireworks imploded and stars soared as viewers were whisked through mines, towers and oil rigs. Assessing ecology and technology, the piece became a metaphoric and quite literal explosive entrance into the world of immersive art.
Still relishing the buzz and excitement of FRIEZE London, Annabelle is in the heart of it all. She places major works of art within auction collections and works with artists and galleries on charitable projects, Blue: Art for the Ocean being just one.
Yes, the collaboration between Christie’s and Blue Marine Foundation concluded with an exhilarating, adrenaline-pumping, highly spirited auction, but it also raised significant funds for a terrific cause. That’s before even mentioning the performance of my dream dinner-table guest of honour, Marina Abromović.
An avid follower of Abromović’s methods—I devoured her memoir Walk Through Walls and plea you to add it to your reading list— Annabelle affirms, “She speaks; you listen.” I left her retrospective at the Royal Academy last year feeling shaken to the core, deeply moved and in awe of the limits of the human body. I cannot begin to imagine the feeling of a guided meditation during the FRIEZE event that Annabelle describes, an event in which Abromović pledged her unwavering love for the water, for a conservation charity committed to restoring the ocean. She stands on a coastline in Fire Island, a place decimated and destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, where the dunes were clobbered and the sea barrier eroded. With her arms raised, her beautiful deep red dress billowing in the wind and the ocean crashing against the shore, she towers, harrowing and morbid yet undeniably touching.
Annabelle talks beyond the auction house as a commercial sphere. Instead, she admirably sees the beauty of passing these works to others. “They take on a life of their own” as they transit from the artist’s hands, through the auctioneer and to the buyer. Uniting Marina and Annabelle is this emphasis on using powerful objects to do good, whether it be charitable cases, pushing societal boundaries or involving global communities. It’s not often you hear about a “gallery swap.” Marina collaborated with Tatiana Cheneviere to exchange the London-based contemporary gallery, Pipeline, with a non-profit gallery in Newcastle Upon Tyne, Slugtown. It’s a revolutionary endeavour, the first of its kind for a London space. It involved children, it promoted cross-regional collaborations and it generated an audience for one of the few exhibition spaces in Newcastle.
Carlota and Oliva’s work navigates the world as the hybrid space it’s becoming. Digital art has no boundaries; unlike a static painting on a wall, it’s an infinite mass of creativity. Do what you will with it. But if you are at the heart of the action, the artwork instantly becomes more digestible. The result? “An emotional response which is simply incomparable.”
Marina, Annabelle, Carlota and Oliva will travel lengths to view an exhibition. Their calendars are jam-packed with events and openings, but the red thread between us is our passion for the subject. What is more? They are all an integral part and at the helm of this evolving landscape. What’s next? One can only begin to imagine. Though, if you’re lucky, you may just bump into Annabelle at Stefanie Heinze's Your Mouth Comes Second at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Marina at Edges of Ailey at the Whitney Museum in New York and Carlota and Oliva at Julian Charrière’s Stone Speakers—The Sounds of the Earth at Palais de Tokyo in Paris. And if I’m lucky? I’ll catch Gabriele Münter: The Great Expressionist Woman Painter on my next gallivant to Madrid.
