Exhibition & Text: Berlin-London Contemporary Art by Women

The force behind this three-month long exhibition was Marliese Ammon, the dynamic other half of the German Ambassador Peter Heimann. For her, there exist few barriers and this exhibition was to create a visible platform for work made across cultural divides where there could be dialogue.

She wanted to make one very important point; too few women artists are shown and too few women artists’ work is sold either by galleries or by auction houses the world over. Her statistics are staggering. She wanted to show work by artists who had been collected and recognised despite the Berlin Wall.  Many of the artists, chosen by the Berlin based curator Ecke Cörlin, had work in the Penz collection in Berlin.

34 Belgrave Square, the former East German embassy with its’ enormous rooms and high ceilings had been transformed into a centre of culture of a united Germany.  Given a semi circular room with good light and a quiet atmosphere to create my installation for my chamber-like Sculpturescapes.

Without realising it at the time, I was being given the opportunity to connect with artists whom I would never have met were it not for this exhibition. I saw the fascinating differences in the considerations, influences and concerns in our work.  Their visual language was a discovery to me.  I was going to be part of something which would act as a barometer as to where women stood in the 21st Century.

While at Heatherleys School of Art, I developed a concept of making three dimensional mixed-media sculptures I have called Sculpturescapes. They are seen from a single viewing point which enabled me to transform found objects by harnessing and manipulating light and scale to create illusory mythical landscapes. The viewer looks through an aperture and by being at the centre of the experience can set off on their own journey.

I developed further the mythical landscape of Jason on his quest for his Golden Fleece. I had partially explored the themes of rite of passage, horizon and journey and now I worked on the idea of the sea, both the wave form and the world below the waves. I created sculptures to capture those mysterious shapes that glint and give up tiny hints of the secret world below.

I planned that four sculptures would be installed inside a white cube…seen through black apertures, one per side. I showed ten photographs of the other Jason Sculpturescapes round the walls 

The curator Ecke Cörlin and his wife Beate Rönspieß produced the catalogue.