Strong views in post-feminist collection

COVENTRY University’s newly-built, newly-located Lanchester Gallery (next door to the Herbert) starts its inaugural show with a post-feminist bang as far as content is concerned.

There’s no arguing with the clearly articulated message of these five female artists about the marginalisation of women and their trivialisation in romantic literature and fashion magazines, but the overly-austere work that embodies their views doesn’t seem substantial enough to convincingly deliver the message.

It’s a hard trick to pull off. In two of Alison Jones’ paintings for instance, the attitude to women’s bodies as exemplified in Willem de Kooning and Jean Dubuffet’s paintings is challenged (not for the first time) in two large but insubstantial watercolours. The logic is only too clear. The work of both artists was characterised by heavily-worked, heavily-impastoed surfaces to which Alison Jones’s response is a quick flick of the wrist. The cheekiness of this gesture is appealing but the monochromatic works themselves are not substantial enough to hold the attention for long.

They make a more telling appearance in the show’s spoof magazine-cum-catalogue, VUOTO, where their presence as illustrations to a hard-hitting text clearly conveys their debunking intentions.

The magazine is probably the best thing about this show. Its slick mimicry of the Vogue style is spot on and its utterly professional look a perfect vehicle for the message that these artists wish to convey. Milly Thompson’s enigmatic ‘romance posters’ are transformed into dazzling message boards that eclipse the real things in the show.

It’s easy enough to articulate strong views but always difficult to turn them into effective works of art. But like it or not, that’s what gallery walls and art itself demands.

Peter McCarthy