GIRLISH PRIDE

Girlish Pride features eight framed oil on canvas paintings that investigate feminine aesthetics in art and discuss the challenges of decorative boundaries. The term pretty has long been used to describe an insignificant and unimportant aesthetic created by the female hand, nevertheless this exhibition has affirmed the position that visuals considered pretty can be used as a rich framework in which to understand art in a socio-cultural and political context.

The institutional disregard of pattern, colour and adornment positions that there is a lack of criticality in expressions of feminine aesthetics. The suggestion that if a work of art is classified as pretty positions that it can therefore be nothing more than a superficial visual pleasure of a decorative surface, ultimately dismissing its innate aesthetic importance. It is through the use of saturated colour palettes, floral patterns and text that the cliché of girliness can be pushed to its decorative limits in order to reveal a concealed truth.

Understanding this visual potential and respecting the choices of contemporary artists to make work that discusses their own subjectivity within creative spaces, challenges the patriarchal codes of aesthetic bias. The body of work considers that if the surface of an image cannot be engaged as a provocation, then the significance of the artwork is entirely missed.