Preview: Women with Vision, RWA

2018 is a year of milestones for Britain’s art academies. It sees the 250th anniversary of the opening of Royal Academy of Art (RA), the first of Britain’s five existing Royal Academies of Art: it also marks 160 years since the Royal West of England Academy – the UK’s only regional Royal Academy – opened its doors as Bristol’s first art gallery.

The RWA is marking the occasion with Women with Vision, a collection of exhibitions detailing the key roles played, in its 160-year history, by female artists. “Like the RA, the RWA had women amongst its founder members, and women have been at the heart of our organisation ever since,” explains Alison Bevan, the RWA’s director.

“With that in mind, we are combining celebrations of the above with another landmark anniversary in 2018 – the centenary of women’s suffrage – by highlighting women Royal Academicians and those who have contributed to the RWA.”

Sandra Blow, ‘Helix’. Photo: Simon Cook

The RWA’s main gallery space will be dedicated to three outstanding women artists who were both Royal Academicians and Royal West of England Academicians: Elisabeth Frink DBE RA RWA (1920-1993), Sandra Blow RA RWA (1926-2006) and Sonia Lawson RA RWA (b.1924: Grieving Women, detail, pictured). Frink – Blow – Lawson will combine painting, sculpture and collage, exploring the tension between figuration and abstraction which runs throughout the twentieth century and emerges through the positioning of their work alongside one another.

Alongside this, until January 28 the RWA hosts the first showing outside London of Cornelia Parker RA’s One Day This Glass Will Break, a Hayward Art Gallery Touring Exhibition highlighting the continuing leading role of a female Royal Academician in shaping contemporary art.

Cornelia Parker, from ‘One Day This Glass Will Break’

This will be followed (January 30-March 11) by an exhibition of work by Anne Redpath ARA RWA RSA, who exemplifies the crossover of membership between the RA and the other Academies and is significant in being the first woman ever to be elected as a Royal Scottish Academician.

Running alongside Frink – Blow – Lawson, Women of the RWA will offer a further exhibition of work by women artists from the RWA’s own collection, with an emphasis on those who enjoyed membership of both Academies. The roster includes Diana Armfield RA RWS RWA, Gillian Ayres CBE RA RWA, Elizabeth Blackadder DBE RA RWA RSA RSW, Ann Christopher RA RWA, Mary Fedden OBE RA RWA, Dod Procter RA RWA and Emma Stibbon RA RWA.

Sandra Blow, ‘Touchstone’

Another section of the gallery will be dedicated to the RWA’s foundress, Ellen Sharples, and to some of the many other women who have played key roles in the organisation’s history – including Janet Stancomb Wills, who became the first woman to be elected President of any Royal Academy of Art in 1912, at a time when most Academies had no women as elected members.

Alison is rightly proud of the Women with Vision series. “These exhibitions allow us to bring many rarely-seen treasures from our permanent collection onto public display – and to provide a feast of first-class art across 16 decades, all of it produced by women.”

The Women with Vision exhibition series continues at the RWA until March 11. For more info, visit www.rwa.org.uk/whats-on/women-vision

Read more: Spike Island exhibitor Lubaina Himid wins Turner Prize 2017