A Living Collection

Republic, 2020, a large fresco painting by Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, was provoked by a question posed to the artist duo on a panel asking them what a woman-dominated public culture would look like. The duo rejected a utopian idea of a female dominated non-violent and inherently caring society and painted Republic. Republic depicts factitious women in conflict dominating a pavement space. The duo was influenced by the melodrama and public setting of Andrea Mantegna’s Flagellation of Christ, with the Pavement (c.1475–80) a painting which depicts an all-male scene of Christ being whipped by Romans. Quinlan and Hasting invert Mantegna’s scene in Republic, instead, highlighting real-world issues that define women’s space and culture: infighting, racism, homophobia and transphobia. Not only is it an inversion of Mantegna’s etching, men to women, but also of the ways women are traditionally conditioned to occupy public space – to be small, quiet and afraid. Rosie Hastings and Hannah Quinlan, Republic, 2020 is gifted by Russell Tovey through the Contemporary Art Society, 2022/23.

Elliot, 2020, an oil painting by Yorkshire-born artist Sarah Ball features many signifiers of Ball’s work like soft brushstrokes, muted colour palettes and a solid background that works in contrast to the piercing glaze of her subject. Ball’s subjects are anonymised often plucked from newspaper cuttings, archival photographs, and social media. The resulting canvases are both intimate and confrontational, thematising issues of identity, gender, and aesthetics.