This new encompassing exhibition at Ipswich gallery celebrates the 100-year anniversary of the preservation of the people act that first gave some women the right to vote. All 100 artworks on display are from the Ipswich collections keeping it very poignant to the town itself, you can tell from the outset that this is not an all singing dancing exhibition with works carefully selected from collections across the globe. It is something much more wholesome and resonates with the meaning and Ipswich’s art community.
The exhibition follows works right through from the 1700’s to present day and can seem slightly overwhelming to hear that it is spanning such a large period. It makes us question the inevitable; why it isn’t focussing solely on the 100 years that it is celebrating?
The exhibition follows no sort of chronology or is divided by sub-theme, so it becomes confusing where to start or if there should be a starting point. Laminated booklets fill each door space to explain which artists are on show in the room and to say you really must work hard to figure out what is going on becomes an understatement. Works from 1700 coupled with contemporary Maggi Hambling’s, portraits next to landscapes all encroached by unflattering labels that are printed in a large bold style that completely distract from the works especially the works that don’t strive to be any bigger than A5 the label almost becomes bigger.
It must be remembered that there are works from highly celebrated women on display who done a lot for the rights of women such as Amy K Browning a prolific Suffolk suffragette, and Rose Mead, an active member of the society of women artists, but again these become lost to Sonia Delaunay’s bright shapes and Claudia Boese’s abstract swathes of colour it all becomes a confusing whirlwind of rhinos and Suffolk landscapes.
The only saving grace to this exhibition which you should just go to see is the room of isolates works by Blanch G Vulliamy, who captures the evolution of the casting shadows of relatively new technology for the time period- the street lamp. It captures the mood of a 1918 London shadowed by war, which connotes a turbulent and changing time for women and their rights. This room perfectly captures the essence of the exhibition and it’s a shame that the whole exhibition does not follow this tone.
