Category: Exhibitions

My work, Think Pink (booth wank at the NPG), was included in Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970–1990at Tate Britain, London, 8 Nov 23 – 7 April 24 when it transfers to National Galleries Scotland: Modern, Edinburgh, 25 May 24 – 26 January 25 and then to the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, 7 March – 1 June 25.

The exhibition explored issues and events such as: the British Women’s Liberation movement, the fight for legal changes impacting women, maternal and domestic experiences, Rock Against Racism and Punk, Greenham Common and the peace movement, the visibility of Black and South Asian Women Artists, Section 28 and the AIDs pandemic.

I was name-checked in reviews in both The Guardian and The Art Newspaper. ‘We watch artist Liz Rideal’s face in a photo-booth as she records the moment of orgasm. This self-portrait, she said, “is about having control over my auto-portrait while in a state of lack of control”’.

The idea of the auto-erotic-auto-portrait seemed to me to be the ultimate in self- portraiture. To set up a conflict between the concept of the controlled self image and disrupt this by recording the physical release of orgasm. These portraits capture my facial expressions in varying states of response to stimulation during the repeated five-second exposures of the photo-booth flash. I wanted to capture the moment of “la petite mort” and see this for myself. This self-portrait is about having control over my auto-portrait whilst in a state of lack of control. Allowing the disruption of orgasmic physical release to be recorded.

theguardian.com
theartnewspaper.com
Women in Revolt, exhibition report, 2025
Cerne Abbas Lady – Arts Council Collection

Jane and Louise Wilson RA hung works by just five artists in the Small Weston Room at the RA Summer Exhibition 2019. These were centred around a sublimely atmospheric work by the internationally renowned Honorary Academician James Turrell that took several days to install.

Works by Sir Michael Craig-Martin RA depict different perspectives of two iconic twentieth century Modernist buildings, the Guggenheim in New York and Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France. Alongside sits Newo-concreto (PTO1), a sculpture by David Batchelor, who argues in his book Chromophobia, that the fear of contamination through colour lurks in much of Western cultural thought. Le Corbusier, for example, rejected ornamentation and the ‘narcotic haze’ of colour in favour of clean, rational, shadowless white. Batchelor’s work can be seen as a wry comment on a cosmopolitan taste that privileges white.

The other exhibited works play with ideas of translucency, line and colour (or its absence) using different media. Liz Rideal’s hanging image of a hovering ghostly form is also related to an architectural site; the 4th century BC Temple of Jove Auxur at Terracina, 130km south west of Rome. It has similar ephemeriality and fragility to Turrell’s changing diamond of light and to Richard Talbot’s finely detailed architectural pencil drawing.

Women, Power and Protest
Gas Hall, Birmingham City Art Gallery
An Arts Council Collection National Partners Exhibition
10 November 2018 to 31 March 2019

Marking a century since the first women won the right to vote, ‘Women Power Protest’ brings together modern and contemporary artworks from the Arts Council Collection and Birmingham’s own collection to celebrate female artists who have explored protest, social commentary and identity in their work.

Showcasing artists including Susan Hiller, Lubaina Himid, Sonia Boyce and Liz Rideal the exhibition does not shy away from difficult subjects, nor underplay the passion behind these artworks.

Inspired by the bold work of feminist artists and activists, Women, Power and Protest raises awareness, provokes debate and asks just how much has changed for women?

Grey Gallery at 11 Spitalfields
London

Press release
Invitation

Compton Verney, Warwickshire
14 March – 14 June 2020

This exhibition explores how clothes and textiles conceal, reveal and seduce through the lenses of art, design, fashion, film and dance. How fabric helps to shape and communicate identity, expresses sensuality and sexuality, and its symbolism in different cultures. Developed by Alice Kettle and Lesley Millar from the book The Erotic Cloth, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018, which includes Rideal’s chapter, The Echoes of Erotic Cloth in Film. Rideal’s work was positioned at the start of the show hung between Reynold’s painting of Mrs. Baldwin in Eastern Dress, 1782 and a projection of Serpentine Dance, a Lumière Brothers c.1899 film recording of Loie Fuller (or Papinta) dancing with her arm/wing cloth extensions.

The Echoes of Erotic Cloth in Film by Liz Rideal