I was mentally sending good wishes to the Society of Women Artists who had their 165th Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries last week. That was because last week was ridiculously hot weather wise in London (c.35°C / 95°F) for most of the week)!
Anybody who went would have actually enjoyed a very pleasant air conditioned gallery - with refreshments on tap!
However I was busy with other prebooked / prior commitments for the first half of the week.
Then my brain started to fry because my 18" thick brick walled home had heated up! I was struggling to keep the temperature inside below 30°C - while my brain fried.... despite having all the windows closed and all the blinds down!
The incentive to go out - where it was even hotter - was minimal!
Which is by way of explanation as to why no visit on Tuesday and why no review.
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| I am eventually going to work out who painted this.... |
However, I did get there on Saturday afternoon, when it was a few degrees cooler, and managed to photograph the artwork in all the Galleries just before it closed.
Interestingly one comment I saw about the exhibition online was "better than the RA Summer Exhibition" and - having visited that particular exhibition with my sister (who was over from Australia) on Tuesday - I can confirm that comment was very far from fanciful in nature.
- I thought a lot of the art was very much better than a lot of the open entries and some of the RA artwork in the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. Below was one of the standout pieces.
- What I noticed in particular was there was a very strong entry by the open artists. You really need to raise your game to get selected nowadays!
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| "Suffer the little children" by Penny Hardy (mild steel) who uses her sculpture to raise money for UNICEF |
- The hang was excellent - and one of the best I've seen in the Mall Galleries this year so far. Parts of the hang were definitely superior. It came across as very considered.
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| the first bay in the East Gallery - the bays enable artwork to be linked to sculpture |
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| The Mall Wall |
- There were some strong colour themes - and grouping the reds in particular was an excellent way of avioding them thrashing the visuals on the rest of the artwork
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| The Long Red Wall |
- The focus on portraits of women in the North Gallery gave a story to the gallery which I appreciated. This is an exhibition which always has a lot of representations of women - but this gallery gave this a focus. Plus it had some excellent individual paintings of women and girls.
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| Part of the exhibition - with a focus on artwork about women - in the North Gallery |
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| Women of a Certain Age by Sara Gregory winner of "The Artist" Feature article award - chosen by the Editor |
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| "Last Day of Summer" by Paulina Kwietniewska YA |
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| Shades of the Small Weston Room. |
- The exhibition is there - but hasn't moved forward into "this week the exhibition is on" mode. It's an error a LOT of art societies make - but it doesn't help promote your art society to those who have made the effort to have a look. It has
- details of the events in exhibition week (but no specific page for the 2026 exhibition)
- visual issues are easy to fix - the list of open artists selected for this open exhibition - but it's not an easy read. I know what's happened and there is an easy fix.
- There is no news of who won which award - which doesn't go down well with sponsors
- plus the list of sponsors is stuck in 2020
- finally the news has not been updated since February! This is a great way to update all those who do not look at Instagram or Facebook!
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