About

What is Art World Women?

Art World Women profiles and showcases the art, projects and stories of women who shape the art world. It is a platform created to give attention, focus and to value the Art of Women Artists, inclusive of artists who identify as female, transgender, intersex and gender fluid. It is our mission contribute to gender equality and increased diversity.

Why Create Art World Women?

Women artists and their art matters to me.  I am passionate about what we create and about valuing the women who shape the Art World.  Creating space for what matters has the power to change.

I created this site because in 2011, I failed to find any single, comprehensive online resource, or a high quality art website specifically about contemporary women artists, working across mediums and stylistic modalities.

I’ll add here that while the focus here is on women and female identifying artists, it is certainly not about not valuing the contributions of male artists.  Men are visible in many aspects and arenas of the art world and attention is given to their contributions in many forums.

Artworldwomen.com seeks to add visibility to the women of the art world and their unique contributions.

Women who shape the Art World

The art that women create makes a difference.  As Artists we are the culture makers.

There’s a premise I hold an affinity with, that art has a potency to transmit and transform, the artist, the viewer and the broader culture.  Further, art transcends time.  It’s potency can carry across generations.  When we look back, as history asserts, it is the art and culture of a time and its peoples that articulates, expresses and defines an era.  As we look forward, it is the art we make now that therefore creates the future and shapes the world yet to take form.

The world needs the influence of women.

Acknowledgement of country

Art World Women wishes to acknowledge the traditional custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to them and their cultures; and to Elders both past and present. We extend our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people, the traditional custodians of the land. We respectfully acknowledge the Wathaurong, Wurundjeri, Taungerong, Jaara and Boon Wurrung People of the Kulin nation.

Submissions

Art World Women encourages submissions from artist, writers, gallerists and curators. Please see the Submit page for information on how you and your work can be featured on Art World Women.

Collaborations

Art World Women is open to and supports collaborations. If you have a project, website, exhibition, event or idea you think would be suitable to the interests of female identifying artists contact Claire at artworldwomen [at] gmail dot com.

About the Creator of Art World Women

Claire Bridge is a Queer feminist interdisciplinary artist, arts writer and poet with Anglo-Indian and culturally Deaf Australian heritage. Her interests lay in the intersections between art, neuroscience, somatic experience, queer ecologies and feminism. Her work responds to issues of gendered violence, intergenerational trauma and the confluence of these concerns with the environment and impacts of climate change. Rather than simply bearing witness to violence or a dystopian “great unravelling”, she is concerned with a reparative aesthetic and sensibility as a means to address the prevailing lack of connection and empathy in wider society. Through her work, Bridge is interested in possibilities for empathy, even with the disavowed.

Bridge’s practice involves hand built ceramic biomorphic sculptures, photographic portraits that explore the embodied experience of complex trauma, violence and empathy, to video works, painting and performance.

She has been a short listed on multiple occasions in the world’s richest portrait prize, the $150,000 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize and a
finalist in the prestigious Sulman Prize at the AGNSW.

She has received numerous awards including the Living Art Award and People’s Choice for the Stan And Maureen Duke, Gold Coast Art Prize, a Silver Medal in the Black Swan Prize, People’s Choice in the Portia Geach and Shirley Hannan Portrait Awards and was winner of the inaugural Linden Award. Her work is held in public and private collections including Maroondah Federation Estate Gallery, the Honorary Consulate of Monaco in Australia and collections across Australia and New Zealand, New York, San Francisco, Washington, London and Europe.

Bridge is currently undertaking a Masters of Contemporary Art at the VCA.

Claire Bridge is a passionate supporter of artists. Since 2011, She has volunteered as Visual Arts Advisor of the Dame Joan Sutherland Fund (based in New York), for the American Australian Association, supporting artists from both Australia and the USA in increasing opportunities for career development, strengthening ties and cultural exchange between the two nations.

Acknowledging the gender gap and to raise the profile of women artists, Bridge created Art World Women, artworldwomen.com, the first of its kind in Australia specially focussed on women artists, including interviews, articles and a platform featuring their work.

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You can find out more about Claire and her art work here: www.clairebridgeartist.com

View a film about Bridge : Edge of Change