MALEVOLENCE

MALEVOLENCE brings together a diverse range of works by highly acclaimed international artists and local emerging talent. Looking at different aspects of gender-based violence, the exhibition explores society’s attitudes towards the victims and perpetrators of such crimes, highlighting the need for radical change. MALEVOLENCE aims to raise greater awareness of this complex issue and contribute to the campaigning for its elimination.

Associated Event: Join the Swarm  for the Official (but informal) Opening on Friday 16^th February 17:00 – 19:00 

The exhibition is timed to coincide with the Gloucester leg of the Anti-ViolenceBee Monument tour.

Alongside a bespoke campaign design by documentary photographer and activist Donna Ferrato (US), which references the bee monument, the works on display have been chosen to highlight different artist responses to gender-based violence.

Donna Ferrato – Campaign Logo Design & Works from HOLY
(b. 1949, USA) Donna Ferrato is an internationally acclaimed photojournalist known for her groundbreaking documentation of the hidden world of domestic violence. Demanding the acknowledgement of critical feminist issues, Donna creates art in urgent opposition to patriarchal oppression. She has contributed to almost every major news publication in the country, and her photographs have appeared in nearly five hundred solo exhibitions in museums and galleries worldwide.

Etinosa Yvonne – From the series It’s all in my Head
(b. 1989, Nigeria) Etinosa Yvonne is a documentary photographer and visual artist born and brought up in Nigeria. Her multi-media project It’s All in My Head explores the lives of Nigerian people who have survived attacks by groups such as Boko Haraam, as well as other violent ethno-religious conflicts. Comprising layered portraits of the survivors, the images are displayed alongside first-person accounts of the survivors, who describe their experiences, thoughts, and coping strategies. It’s All in My Head won the Open Call FORMAT 21 and the 2019 Access Bank ART X prize.

Eugenia Maximova – From the series Silent River
(b. 1973, Bulgaria) Based in Vienna, Eugenia Maximova’s artistic practice engages with socio-political contexts. Inspired by her childhood in Bulgaria, she explores issues of identity and the everyday life in post-communist cultures, consumption, and transience. Eugenia’s ongoing photo-project Silent River examines the silence surrounding the death of her sister-in-law, 30-year old television journalist Victoria Marinova, who was brutally raped and murdered in the Bulgarian city of Ruse. Silent River won the 2023 inaugural Austrian Photobook prize.

Kourtney Roy – From the series The Other End of the Rainbow
(b. 1981, Canada) Renowned for richly saturated, cinematic photography, Kourtney Roy is frequently inspired by the glamorous aesthetics of Hollywood cinema. However, The Other End of the Rainbow represents a departure from her cinematic staged portraits. In this work, Kourtney explores the history of disappearances along the ‘Highway of Tears’, Highway 16 in Northern British Columbia. Her photographs document the injustice faced by the families of these missing women; colonial prejudice, racism, and indifference from authorities. The Other End of the Rainbow won the Prix des libraires du livre de photographie 2023.

Renate Bertlmann – Knife Rose and Orange with Knife (From the Heroines Collection)
(b. 1943, Austria) Renate Bertlmann is an Austrian artist of the feminist avant-garde, who has explored issues around the representation of sexuality, eroticism, and patriarchal violence since the 1970s. Her artistic practice spans painting, drawing, collage, photography, sculpture and performance, confronting the social stereotypes assigned to masculine and feminine behaviour and relationships with acuity and irony. Renate’s work has won many awards, including the 2017 Grand Austrian State Prize.

Local emerging artists, Danielle Tipton and Harriet Hughes, are making new works for the exhibition with Danielle’s photographic series based on a childhood traumatic experience and Harriet’s installation as a memorial to victims of femicide.

Danielle Tipton is an English artist using Phototherapy to create autobiographical work around her difficult childhood. As an adult, the harsh shadows of depression and anxiety as a result of this remain, but she allows these overwhelming emotions to enable her creatively. Her work is realised with photography, poetry and performance.

English artist Harriet Hughes uses a diverse range of mediums; drawing, printmaking, textile, photography and painting. She examines production and labour using dolls as her primary image, incorporating a decorative visual language in order to critique consumerism and the unpaid labour of women simultaneously. By using dolls in the place of women, the complexities of being human are stripped away and misogyny is seen clearly and satirised.

Also on display will be books and ephemera from the Heroines Collection, poetry from Halima Malek and SheSpoke as well as illustrated slogans for t-shirts selected from an open call.

Visitors will be able to create badges and t-shirts against gender-based violence to take away for themselves and continue to raise awareness.

Located at 22 Kings Walk, Gloucester, GL1 1RY*

*Note – this event is taking place in an offspace, not in the museum