I N F E M S - I n t e r s e c t i o n a l F e m i n i s t A r t C o l l e c t i v e

a t L e i c e s t e r C o n t e m p o r a r y

No Reserve @ Leicester Contemporary

Discussion event: Saturday 23rd October | 4.30pm

Leicester Contemporary, 16 Market St, Leicester LE1 6DP

Exhibition Dates 15th October – 5th November 2021

InFems invite you to a Discussion Event as part of their first UK show at Leicester Contemporary: What could the creative landscape look like for women if there were no reserve?

This informal discussion amongst the collective’s founder members, which will open up to ‘No Reserve’ guest artists and audience, starts with the premise that women artists are consistently undervalued; that they have a lower reserve price and are still overlooked, particularly if they are minorities. Working-class women and mothers have absorbed the message that they will only ever rise so far in their endeavours and no further. InFems poses a series of questions: What kind of cordons have we observed? What are the things that have held is back and which we’ve individually had to transcend? Could we envisage a time when barriers were lifted and the playing field more open/even? What might women achieve if the wall in their head were removed? How do we create a new paradigm of working which is supportive and inclusive rather than inhibiting? What does it mean to be a female figurative artist today? How do we choose to represent the female body?

InFems art collective presents ‘No Reserve’ at Leicester Contemporary. Taking its cue from the adrenalin-fuelled atmosphere of the gallery site’s former life as an auction house, No Reserve is about not holding back, about the limitless, the performative and the theatrical, about extravagant gestures and trickster behaviour. It showcases works across media including figurative paintings, film, works on paper, and sculpture.

InFems (Intersectional Feminist Art Collective) evolved out of its founder-members’s mutual interest in both the potential of intersectional feminism to provoke discussion around the issues facing women today and in their explorations of the female body. Created with the intention of implementing a new model of practice where collaborative working replaces hierarchy and mentorship replaces competition,

InFems aims to empower women and girls in their creative endeavours. The collective grew out of a series of formal and casual conversations happening in parallel between friends, peers, and colleagues, and prior related exhibitions. InFems Art Collective was formally ratified in February 2020 and its inaugural exhibition ‘Biting Back and Enjoying the Taste’ opened in August 2021 at PADA, Lisbon with Movart and guest artists Rita GT and Keyezua.

In keeping with InFems’s aim to foster collaborations with locally based artists, ‘No Reserve’ also features four guest exhibitors selected after an open call-out to artists with a connection to Leicester: Macha Barnden, Hatty Buchanan, Mita Vaghela, and Lucy Cade-Stewart. Leicester Contemporary was established in June 2021 by an artists’ collective.

“I am filled with admiration for the whole enterprise, which sounds to me ambitious, sensible and very well thought out. I can well believe that Leicester doesn't have a dedicated space for contemporary art and it seems to me that what you are trying to do will be very much needed and appreciated.”

Bridget Riley

www.leicestercontemporary.co.uk

@leicestercontemporary

FAO: Andrew Birks

tco.artists@gmail.com