Sixty Years exhibition, Tate Britain

After a year of UK celebrations marking the centenary of some women getting the vote, Tate Britain announced a new curated display dedicated to the work of women artists working in Britain from 1960 to the present day. The gallery space showcases around 60 works by more than 30 female artists, including Turner Prize winner Rachel Whiteread, painter Bridget Riley and the multimedia artist Mona Hatoum.

Highlights of the display include work by Monster Chetwynd, whose giant slug sculptures greeted Tate Britain visitors this winter, as well as the first video installation ever acquired by the Tate: Susan Hiller’s Belshazzar’s Feast, the Writing on Your Wall 1983-84, which explores the television as ‘a potential vehicle of reverie’. Sixty Years also features a painting by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, known for her portraits of black subjects, as well as a neon and argon tube sculpture made in 1972 by Rita Donagh.

The Tate’s director Maria Balshaw, the first woman to hold the position, says the initiative is part of a move to increase the representation of female artists across the galleries. Last year, Annie Swynnerton’s portrait of the suffragette Millicent Fawcett went on display at the Tate Britain; and the gallery acquired four paintings by another renowned suffragette, Sylvia Pankhurst. This year, many of the Tate’s sites will foreground female talent, with monographic exhibitions on Dorothea Tanning and Dora Marr planned at Tate Modern, Sol Calero at Tate Liverpool and Otobong Nkanga at Tate St Ives.