Galina Munroe, Even when I feel nothing I feel it completely, 2023. Oil and collage on canvas, 160 x 140cm. Courtesy: the artist and PIERMARQ*, Sydney.

PIERMARQ* presents Beware the Quiet Woman, an exhibition of works by Galina Munroe. This will be the UK-based artist’s 5th exhibition with the gallery.

“Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at” writes John Berger in the influential collection of essays, Ways of Seeing, published in 1972. Berger’s revolutionary concept of the male gaze describes not only most relations between men and women, but also the relation of women to themselves. “The surveyor of woman in herself is male, thus she turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.” In 14 works of oil and collage on canvas, Munroe conceives a new way of activating the portrayal of female figures, on and behind the canvas, exploring themes of the body, nature personified, selfhood and color as portrait, nurturing her vision of womanhood.

Replete with complexities, realness, beauty, complications and joy with emphasis on recurring floral shapes and opaque layers of colour, Munroe’s paintings investigate the history of art made by women, as well as art made under the influence of feminism. Questioning the male gaze, she nurtures and discovers a deeper, personal, female gaze. For Munroe, each portrait recalls Emory Hall’s poem, “I have been a thousand different women.” Acting as storytellers for the everyday, her figures are both soft and bold, transcribing messages of womanhood and deep emotions, made of thousands of tiny gestures, compassion and love, exploring the boundaries and vulnerabilities of an organic, feminine nature.

Opening Event: Thursday 5 October, 6 – 8pm.

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