Always in the Vanguard – Women Artists In and Out of Russia in the 21st Century

Sochi 2014 is upon us in less than a month, and politics of gender and sexuality in Russia are under greater global scrutiny than ever before. Three timely concurrent exhibitions  the Albemarle Gallery this month showcase a host of the most exciting female contemporary artists Russia has produced , opening a window onto women’s self-expression in a climate which in January saw President Putin describe the recently-released Pussy Riot ers Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina as ‘ a disgrace to their femininity ’.

Always in the Vanguard: Women Artists In and Out of Russia in the 21st Century is the headline display, bringing together 17 works from six emerging artists working in Russia and beyond. Virtuoso painter Dasha Fursey is one of the real stars in this collection. Fresh from last year’s Saatchi Gallery exhibition ‘Gaity is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union’, her stylised images of Young Pioneer girls take a wry look at the utopic Soviet ideas of socialism she grew up with. 

Elsewhere, complex geometic paintings by Marina Usacheva and Masha Trebukova recall the cubist legacy of 20th century master Natalia Goncharova, whilst the 27-year-old Olga Kroytor’s Awakening collage offers a powerful commentary on the use and abuse of women’s bodies in the media.

Sharing the rest of the space are two separate displays dedicated to Belarusian born painter Walera Martinchyk (the only male artist in the show) and Swiss-Polish Karina Wisniewska, both of whom draw on the painting heritage of the broader former Soviet Union. Wisniewska’s large-scale studies of lines and patterns are exquisite, but Walera Martinchyk’s mesmerising reworkings of female forms in traditional religious painting stole the show for us. His canvases take the figures of the Madonna and child as a starting point, and transform them into riots of geometric shapes and Cyrillic forms that raise questions about the way these figures are ‘constructed’. A sensational highlight in one of the most thought-provoking small gallery shows this Spring.