Colonial art canons persist: UK regional galleries confront systemic exclusion of female artists in Making Her Mark
Original framing: “‘Still lots to talk about’: UK galleries team up to shine light on female artists” — The Guardian - World
The headline’s cheerful 'Still lots to talk about' masks the absurdity of a project that claims to 'shine light' on female artists while operating within a system that has systematically dimmed their visibility for centuries. The trickster here is the gallery itself—a figure that performs progressivism while maintaining the same exclusionary structures. Like Erasmus’ 'Praise of Folly,' this narrative celebrates a hollow victory, where the act of 'talking' replaces the work of dismantling.
The 'Making Her Mark' project exemplifies how liberal art institutions performatively address systemic exclusion while remaining tethered to colonial and patriarchal structures.
The collaboration between Penzance, Worcester, and Kirkcaldy galleries foregrounds individual female artists within a Western canon, but sidesteps the deeper issue: regional galleries’ collections are artefacts of empire, shaped by male-dominated auction houses and donor networks that still dictate 'value.' True systemic change would require decolonising acquisition policies, redistributing funding to marginalised artists, and dismantling the gatekeeping roles of curators and collectors. The project’s trickster edge lies in its cheerful framing of a problem that demands not just visibility, but the unravelling of centuries-old power structures—something no 'collaboration' between regional galleries can achieve alone. The solution pathways must therefore centre not just representation, but the redistribution of cultural and economic capital, lest this become another hollow victory in the long war against art world inequality.