Women by Women

Women by Women:
Judie Bamber, Bridget Mac, Kim McCarty, Suzannah Sinclair, Edwina White
July 8th - August 20th 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, July 8, 2011, 6-8pm

Heiner Contemporary is pleased to present Women by Women, a group exhibition of work by women portraying women. The works of Judie Bamber, Bridget Mac, Kim McCarty, Suzannah Sinclair, and Edwina White express female identity through different media and methods. Their work captures the contradiction, complexity, enduring stereotypes, and power of femininity. Issues of motherhood and girlhood, the development of female identity, female intellect and female sexuality, as well as how women both embrace and struggle against gender stereotypes are evident in the works. The figures presented encourage and resist the act of looking while illustrating the strength and vulnerability, confidence and insecurity, and allure and vanity of women.

No longer limited to the domestic sphere, the definition of womanhood is continually transforming, resulting in a wonderful complication of what it means to be feminine. This confusion is present in the delicate androgyny of Kim McCarty’s unpronounced and developing forms of adolescent females. McCarty’s works pose questions surrounding how these girls will evolve from this in-between stage of life. Will they acquire the self-awareness and confidence present in Bridget Mac’s work? Or might they become buttoned up and seemingly impenetrable like Edwina White’s society ladies, whose cool gazes and whimsical accoutrements distract from their vulnerability? If these girls become parents will they, like the woman depicted in Judie Bamber’s mom series, embody the inherently complex nature of motherhood? As women, will they wish to be the object of someone’s desire, but not objectified, as might some of the models in Suzannah Sinclair’s works on panel? Women by Women addresses these questions by bringing together artwork depicting women in a variety of roles and situations, which together challenge a simplified definition of what it means to be a woman today.

Born in Detroit, Judie Bamber received a BFA from the California Institute of Arts in 1983. Her exhibition career includes recent shows at Angles Gallery, Los Angeles, David Nolan Gallery, New York, and Gorney Bravin + Lee, New York. Bamber’s work has been shown at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, the UCLA Hammer Museum of Art, and the Phoenix Art Museum, and she has received several grants including the 2007 COLA Grant. Bamber’s professional experience features positions at Harvard University and Otis College of Art and Design. She lives and works in Los Angeles, where she is represented by Angles Gallery.

A native of Australia, the twenty-six year old Bridget Mac received a degree in Visual Arts from RMIT University, Melbourne. Mac rose to prominence in 2010 when she won the Australian National Portrait Gallery’s Youth Self Portrait Prize with the photograph Masculine Feminine. The same year she received the inaugural Pool Grant to pursue her current project, a series of portraits of artists, musicians and writers who worked in the former communist East Germany. Living and working in Berlin, Mac has exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions. She is currently a finalist for the Head On Portrait Prize at the Australian Centre of Photography in Sydney.

Born in Los Angeles, where she currently resides, Kim McCarty is a graduate of UCLA (MFA) and the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena (BFA). McCarty has had recent solo exhibitions at David Klein Gallery, Detroit, Lightbox Gallery, Los Angeles, Cherryandmartin, Los Angeles and Briggs Robinson, New York as well as group exhibitions including shows at Island Weiss Gallery, New York, Dominique Fiat Gallery, Paris, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, Aldrich Museum of Art, Ridgefield, CT and Galerie Sho, Tokyo. McCarty’s work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, UCLA Hammer Museum of Art and the Honolulu Academy of Art.

The German-born, Brooklyn-based artist Suzannah Sinclair received her BFA in Printmaking from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston. Widely shown internationally, her most recent solo exhibitions were held at Charro Negro Galeria in Guadalajara, Mexico and at Samsøn Gallery, Boston. Her latest group exhibitions include the Portland Museum of Art, Maine, New Image Art Gallery, Los Angeles, and THIS gallery, Los Angeles. Sinclair has participated in several art fairs including SCOPE New York, and NADA Miami. Her work has been featured in Art in America, ArtForum and New American Paintings. She is represented by Samsøn Gallery, Boston.

Currently residing in New York, Edwina White was born in Sydney, Australia, where she received a degree in Visual Communications from the University of Technology. White’s work has been exhibited in the UK, Japan, Russia, and throughout Australia and the United States. Her debut New York solo exhibition was held at Gigantic Artspace in Tribeca. She is currently represented by Kinz+Tillou Gallery and shows consistently at Pulse New York and Pulse Miami. Her work is in the private collections of Angela Missoni, Alan Steele, John Kerry and Theresa Heinz, and institutions including The Hayward Gallery, London, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Marfa Ballroom.

Women by Women will be on view at Heiner Contemporary July 8 – August 20, 2011, with an opening reception on Friday, July 8th, from 6-8pm. Heiner Contemporary is located at 1675 Wisconsin Ave, NW. For more information about the gallery and upcoming exhibitions, email info@heinercontemporary.com.