Signature Piece – Filling the Gap

Square of white cotton mounted and framed, signed by the artist
60 x 60cm

Here are some facts that led me to creating this piece:

For every £1 a male artist earns for his work, a woman earns a mere 10p. 

When men’s artwork is signed, it goes up in value; conversely when work by women is signed it goes down in value. The addition of a woman’s signature can devalue an artwork to the extent that female artists are more likely to leave their work unsigned.

It is not hard to grasp the origins of this inequality, given that women were largely barred from artistic professions and training until the 1870s. In more explicitly sexist eras of art history, the textile arts were a medium that women were permitted and encouraged to adopt. 

Art by women continues to be undervalued, according to the findings of a new study spearheaded by researchers at the University of Luxembourg. In a pair of experiments and through analysis of some 1.5 million auction sales records, the researchers found that respondents consistently ranked works they believed to have been made by male artists higher than those believed to be by female artists — even when the works had in fact been generated by an artificial intelligence, and that works by women typically sell for 47.6% of the prices male artists fetch at auction.

£50,000
£40,000

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