Girls club: Pop-up gallery curates show from a different point of view

Girls Only was founded by British curator Antonia Marsh, who was surrounded by girls and women in her formative years of education, but then entered the art world to discover it was mostly men. ‘I simply wanted to create more opportunities for female artists in the art world because I still don’t think there are enough,’ Marsh tells LS:N Global.

In the US, Girls Only is a residency programme in Brooklyn, but for London, Marsh decided to stage a pop-up exhibition so that she could display the works from the breadth of artists she wanted to highlight. Her curatorial approach was not so much about a theme and more about highlighting the individual attributes and messages of each of the female artists. ‘It was important just to get all of their work out there,’ says Marsh. ‘I’ve [always] been surrounded by talented female artists, and working in the art world, [it is clear] this is not in proportion to how often they are exhibited in galleries and museums. So I wanted to encourage women to keep making art.’

For more on how women are carving out places for themselves in often male-dominated sectors, read our macrotrend The Athena Woman.