I have tallied up the number of female and male artists shown at a number of high-profile contemporary art galleries this winter to examine the gender imbalance in exhibiting contemporary artists. I have used the Hobart Winter Gallery Guide for this project, so there may be a few mistakes. Unsurprisingly, there are many more male artists than female overall, and it also appears that you are more likely to get a solo show if you are male. Apparently, there are more female Higher Research Degree Graduates at the Tasmanian School of Art than male graduates, so there is no shortage of practicing female artists. So, what are the excuses?
The galleries included in the tally are: Carnegie, Plimsoll, Criterion, Inflight, and Bett Gallery
I have excluded CAST for now as their listing in the Winter Guide doesn’t list individual artists and their website is down. I have also excluded 6a for similar reasons. The TMAG is a bit hard to calculate, but off the top of my head I think that the last two solo exhibitions there – Leigh Hobba and Ricky Maynard- were both male artists. The Salamanca Arts Centre is a bit hard to list because of its extremely varied program and often short shows. The gallery that triggered this count – Despard – is also excluded because they don’t list individual artists in the Gallery guide. I’m hoping to start including these other galleries in the future but I thought I’d just get these numbers up first.
(Note: collaborative artists are listed as individuals. That is, a work made by two female artists, both artists will be counted as individuals.)
Okey dokey here are the numbers:
Carnegie:
Female 4
Male 0
(Two females had solo shows)
Plimsoll:
Female 4
Male 9
(Excluding 1+2 Architecture)
Criterion
Female 1
Male 4
(Two males had solo shows)
Inflight
Female 4
Male 3
(Two male and one female had solo shows)
Bett Gallery
Female 1
Male 6
(Two males and one female had solo shows)
Total:
Female 14
Male 22
Total Solo:
Female 4
Male 6 (8 if you count TMAG)
Carnegie had a definite gender balance, but it bucked the trend by being dominated by Female artists.
Plimsoll, despite all of the University’s equality statements, has more than twice the number of exhibiting male artists to female artists.
Criterion and Bett, our two commercial galleries have a definite swing towards the penis. Significant?
Inflight is perhaps the most balanced. I suspect that being an ARI, Inflight gets a lot of artists directly applying for shows, as opposed to being curated or selected for shows. What does this tell you about curatorial practices in Hobart? Should I be recording the gender of curators too perhaps?
As for TMAG… now that there is a female curator of art (well there will be in a couple of months), we might see a couple of female artists being granted solo exhibitions.
Once the CAST website is back up and I get info from 6a, I'll post some updated results. I'm looking forward to seeing what Spring shows us too...
4 comments:
Very interesting, I'd like to see the tally continue so we could see some trends?
I'm interested into why this is occurring though - does it largely come down to the individual/board in charge of the gallery? Or is there a wider effect?
Apparently it's worldwide. The visual arts in general are male dominated.
Thanks for commenting Bingo!
we at 6a try for a gender split 50%/50%. but it all depends on who applies.
Of course, it's an accepted piece of knowledge that men get the solos in big galleries or institutions. By and large, women are clumped together in group shows, because apparently, we are unable to think on a large scale.
*groan*
Also - in commercial galleries, by and large, men get more money for their work. Hence any sense of over-representation.
Thanks for bringing it up though, it irritates me no end.
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