Curating duo Marie-Claudine Llamas and Mica Bowman set out to shake up the maledominated art world with group exhibition celebrating women artists from 18th Century to the present day.

London,12h April 2023 – Curators Marie-Claudine Llamas and Mica Bowman are shaking up the maledominated Mayfair art world with a group exhibition a Bowman Sculpture featuring some of the most important18th and 19th century, Modern and Contemporary women artists. ‘The Power of She: A Tribute to Women in the Arts’, will be presented by Bowman Sculpture and Guerin Projects at Bowman Sculpture’s iconic gallery space in the heart of St James’s, London, from 5th May to 16th June 2023.

‘The Power of She’ celebrates women in the arts and will bring together a diverse selection of artworks across different mediums. The exhibition will feature 15 artists from the 18th century through to the present day and will explore a multitude of themes from the silent history of female artists, women’s current role in society, to humanity’s relationship with nature and the human condition.

Helmed by 2 women curators passionate about providing a platform for female creativity, the exhibition will take place in Mayfair, the epicentre of what has traditionally been a male-dominated art world, ‘The Power of She’ promises to shake up the patriarchy. Marie Claudine and Mica are at the forefront of a handover of the curatorial baton to a new generation, with this passion project designed to put women artists front and centre.

‘The Power of She: A tribute to Women in the Arts’ is a ground-breaking curatorial initiative from a duo of accomplished women curators: Marie-Claudine Llamas (Guerin Projects) and Mica Bowman (Bowman Sculpture). This exhibition will feature some of the most exciting 19th century and modern sculptors including:
Camille Claudel, Elizabeth Frink and Barbara Hepworth, juxtaposed with leading contemporary artists including Emily Young, Lily Lewis and Pauline Amos.
Celebrating the contemporary, the modern and the timeless, the curation of this exhibition will encourage a dialogue between the historical and the contemporary in a frank and thought-provoking manner. While the exhibition will focus on works of art, the 6-week program will include a performance by Natascha Mair, Prima Ballerina of the English National Ballet, female musicians and DJ’s, talks from several artists involved, including Emily Young, described by the Financial Times as “Britain’s greatest living stone sculptor” as well as a special talk from New York gallerist Hong Gyu Shin, who rediscovered two 20th-century female artists – Carla Prina (1950s) and Else-Fischer-Hansen (1960s) and brought them into museum collections.

Mica Bowman: “The overarching theme that ties everything together in this show is about women’s voices: those women from earlier centuries or even decades whose voices may not have been heard or appreciated during their own lifetimes, and those of the living artists we are working with who do have a voice. While I cannot say that we are living in a world currently where all women’s voices are heard, although much progress has been made, especially in recent years, we feel it is important to continue to address the subject of inequality and to remember the women that came before us.”

Marie-Claudine Llamas: “With ‘The Power of She’ we are addressing the representation of womanhood by women through the centuries. The exhibition will describe the different states, chapters and aspects which a woman goes through during the course of her life. This exhibition is about generosity of curation, it is highly expansive and introspective, offering the viewer a diverse view of the subject matter across media forms, including sculpture, painting, drawing, poetry and performative arts.” The exhibition’s venue – Bowman Sculpture – is a gallery which specialises in sculpture from 1860 to the present day and is the foremost gallery in the world for sculpture by Auguste Rodin. Mica Bowman is breathing some fresh air and a new perspective into the traditional sculpture gallery, which was founded by her parents Robert and Michele Bowman in 1993. Robert Bowman is an esteemed 19th century sculpture authority and appointed sculpture expert to the UK government.

Although the gallery is known for procuring the finest examples of works by Rodin available on the market, the gallery also deals in works by Camille Claudel whose work will be featured in ‘The Power of She’. Perhaps most widely known for her controversial and tragic love affair with Rodin, which has been highlighted in two films and several books, Claudel now has her own museum, the Camille Claudel Museum in Nogent-surSeine, and her works are considered integral to any serious collection of sculpture from this period. Despite the fact that her work is now fully acknowledged by the art world today, Claudel faced many barriers as an artist but more importantly as a woman at the turn of the century.

Emily Young says: “You can count the names of famous women artists from a couple of centuries ago on one hand. If that. In centuries past, and millennia past, a woman’s fate was her womb. A woman’s lot was most often one of bearing and burying babies. So it’s not surprising there were not many women artists. All humans are equally subject to the natural laws of the Earth to live and breathe and thrive, or not. Every human needs to know this.

‘The Skies Daughter’ to be featured in ‘The Power of She’ is carved from a piece of Lapis Lazuli. It was mined in a high mountainous region of North Eastern Afghanistan. The working conditions there are extremely harsh, but the work in the mines provides some income for local people. Lapis has been mined there for at least 8,000, possibly 9,000 years. As Pliny the Elder said of it, “The starry heavens above, Lapis below.” It was and is one of the most treasured and beautiful stones on Earth. My work is inspired by the beauty of the natural world and the skies. Also, the fact that stone can endure for billions of years – out of the past and into the future. I touch it now, making marks that carry something of human consciousness into that future.’

Lily Lewis is exhibiting her ‘FACES’ series and explains: “The faces in the series are all secondary characters in major literary works, their positions in the plot are crucial but overshadowed by the ‘heroes’. With this ‘FACES’ series I’m playing with the concept of the ‘ideal’ as a un-fixable point, and questions of agency and “main character energy” within the narrative structures inherited and upheld through history and literature. These overlooked characters were at best secondary and at worst toxic tokenistic extended adjectives, lending colour to plot and prose. These faces seem almost ghostlike, haunting, within the context of reimagined classical landscapes, painted with brushstrokes like the weave of binary in both physical textiles and the woven web of our computerised experience.”

Pauline Amos describes the work she is exhibiting in ‘The Power of She’: “The work is visceral, disturbing, and purposefully provocative. The paintings are heavy with my own history and narrative. The world I experience, as a woman, interpreted and recorded in paint. The work, the art, is the person; the life force that is making the work. The paintings are documents and a record of an action or a time in life that has happened. These two paintings, ‘Fecund Fertile Fruitful Me’ (1 & 2), show my frustration and, more than that, a quiet desperation.”

Notes to Editors:
Bowman Sculpture X Guerin Projects
Exhibition dates: 5th May – 16th June 2023
Invitation only Private view: 4th May 2023
Private view Sponsored by Pink Diesel
guerinprojects.com
Address: Bowman Sculpture 6 Duke’s Street
6 Duke Street St James’s
London SW1Y 6BN
bowmansculpture.com

Important Dates:
Artists talk / Panel discussion: 11th May at Bowman Sculpture:
The exhibition will be participating in London Gallery Weekend: 2nd – 4th June at Bowman Sculpture. The gallery will host a special performance by Natascha Mair Prima Ballerina of the English National Ballet at 3 pm on the 4th of June.

Women Artists Art Week (WAAW) Event: 4pm on 12th June at Bowman Sculpture:
Bowman Sculpture are proud to be participating in the Women Artists Art Week (WAAW), an initiative that encourages art galleries and art institutions to advance gender equality in the art world. The gallery will host a special performance by Natascha Mair Prima Ballerina of the English National Ballet and a special guest talk by New York gallerist Hong Gyu Shin, on his re-discovery of two 20th-century female artists Carla Prina and Else Fischer-Hansen. For more information about WAAW go to: waawworld.com

About the Curators;
Mica Bowman
Mica Bowman is the director of Bowman Sculpture, the foremost gallery in the world for sculpture by Auguste Rodin. The gallery specialises in European Romantic sculpture of the 19th century, dealing in the masters of this period, such as Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, and Aimé-Jules Dalou through to the Impressionist, Modern and Cubist sculpture of Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso, Henri Laurens, Jaques Lipichitz and Ossip Zadkine. Bowman Sculpture also specialises in significant English New School and Modern British artists, such as Lord Frederic Leighton and Hamo Thornycroft, and Henry Moore and Elizabeth Frink. Additionally, the gallery deals in a selection of contemporary artists, such as Joanna Allen, Hanneke Beaumont, Maurice Blik, Helaine Blumenfeld, Massimiliano Pelleti and Emily Young. Mica joined Bowman Sculpture in 2019 and has since curated several exhibitions including ‘Rodin: Influenced and Inspired’, ‘Hanneke Beaumont: Timeless Expressions of the Human Condition’ and ‘When Matter Becomes Form’. Her enthusiasm for sculpture subject has led to significant sales to both private collectors and public institutions, including the Musée Rodin, the Musée Camille Claudel, the Snite Museum and The Wadsworth Atheneum. In 2020 she collaborated with the Sir Denis Mahon Foundation featuring the work of Emily Young and participated in Masterpiece conversations discussing contemporary Sculpture with Melanie Vandenbrouck, curator of sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Marie-Claudine Llamas
Marie Claudine Llamas (b. 1994, France) is a London based French curator. She started her career as an artist, studying at les Écoles des Art Decoratifs (Ecoles du Louvre) in Paris, Charles Cecil Studios in Florence and City of London Art School in London, after which she went to the Royal College of Arts on a scholarship.

MC recently rose to attention for having curated the all women “The Tribe” rooms as part of Art in The Age of Now at the Fulham Town Hall and LUAP’s solo show at 95 New Bond Street. Over the past 10 years she has curated numerous large scale acclaimed shows, which included Chas Smash’s “A Comfortable Man” Show at Wiltons Music Hall and “Take! Eat!” Curated at St Marylebone Parish Church during Frieze week. She has taken part in numerous panel talks, including “Boom for Real, the Late Teenage Years of Jean Michel Basquiat” at Hauser and Wirth in Somerset. MC is growing to become an accomplished part of the burgeoning London Art Scene, her work has recently been featured in the Kensington and Chelsea Review and Evening Standard.

Guerin Projects is led by MC, it was created as an homage and tribute to her late mother, who’s maiden name was Guerin. Guerin Projects focuses on the curation of exhibitions championing women.

About The Artists;
19th century and Modern
Helaine Blumenfeld (b. 1942)
Camille Claudel (1864-1943)
Barbara Hepworth (1903 – 1975)
Else Fischer-Hansen (1905-1996)
Carla Prina (1911 – 2008)
Dame Elisabeth Frink (1930 – 1993)
Mollie Faustman (1883 – 1966)
Emily Young (Contemporary)
Joanna Allen (Contemporary)
Hanneke Beaumont (Contemporary)
Germaine Kruip (Contemporary)
Sara Sizer ((Contemporary)
Lily Lewis (Contemporary)
Pauline Amos (Contemporary)
Jessica St James (Contemporary)

ABOUT BOWMAN SCULPTURE:
Bowman Sculpture is the foremost gallery in the world for sculpture by Auguste Rodin. The gallery specialises in European Romantic sculpture of the 19th century, dealing in the masters of this period, such as Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, and Aimé-Jules Dalou through to the Impressionist, Modern and Cubist sculpture of Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso, Henri Laurens, Jaques Lipichitz and Ossip Zadkine. Bowman Sculpture also specialises in significant English New School and Modern British artists, such as Lord Frederic Leighton and Hamo Thornycroft, and Henry Moore and Elizabeth Frink. Additionally, the gallery deals in a selection of contemporary artists, such as Joanna Allen, Hanneke Beaumont, Maurice Blik, Helaine Blumenfeld, Massimiliano Pelleti and Emily Young. Robert Bowman is an appointed sculpture expert for the UK Government committees for the Acceptance in Lieu Tax Scheme and The Export of Art and Objects of Cultural Reference. He was the head of the TEFAF vetting committee for 19th & 20th-century sculpture for over 15 years. Robert and Michele Bowman opened Bowman Sculpture in 1993 after 15 years at Sotheby’s from 1979 to 1993, during which he was Director of European Works of Art. Bowman Sculpture is the world’s leading gallery for sculpture by Auguste Rodin and has earned a worldwide reputation for consistently sourcing works of the highest quality.The family-ownedand-run gallery is located in St James’s, where it welcomes collectors, enthusiasts, academics, and newcomers to explore its artist-defining sculpture.

For press enquiries or interview requests contact:
Lee Sharrock | lee@leesharrock.co.uk | leesharrock.co.uk | @culturallee | @leesharrock