So, I found out on Monday that I was on the long list for the Anthology prize show – which was quite exciting. Then tonight I found out, I’m not in the 10 finalist. Oh well, you win some you lose some…
I checked the list for a friend of mine, Rebecca Glover, and sadly she wasn’t there either, but a male friend of hers was. Then I noticed something. The list of 10 was almost all male names, there were two that could have been female, but in fact only one of them was. So, only 1 out of the 10 finalists was a woman… a bit strange given that there are now more female than males graduating from art school.
So, I went back to the long list and checked what the split was there: there were 23 female artists and 22 male artists. So the preselectors had produced a very evenly balanced long list in terms of the sexes, but the selectors produced a predominantly male list.
So, who was the jury: Mark Clannachan, Zavier Ellis, Hélène Guérin, Sue Hubbard, Ben Street and Simon Rumley. So two women and 4 men.
Now, this really isn’t a case of sour grapes, whilst I’ve been checking through the names, and trying to make sure that my guesses to gender are right by googling the artists, I’ve been quite distracted and have enjoyed looking at their work. Jocelyn, the only female on the final list has some fascinating work. And some of the both males and females who didn’t get selected had great work. But it is just a bit extream for the final list to be *so* male.
From a guardian article:
“only four women have won the Turner prize since its inception in 1984, and the roster of artists represented by the world’s leading contemporary art galleries remains overwhelmingly male”
Art by definition should be subjective, and I don’t think you can start telling selectors to have quotas. But perhaps it is the people who are doing the selecting that is the key to this. Gallerists still tend to be predominantly male, as do art critics. Does art appreciation have a sexual bias, are women more attracted to works by women, and men to works by men? I think we are naturally attracted to work that has some resonnance to our personal concerns, and there must be something in the idea that men and woman even in todays society continue to have very different experiences and perhaps through both nature or nurture have intrisincally different ways of viewing the world.
Suppose this were categorically true, and women selectors only favoured women artist, and male selectors only male artist, our Anthology shortlist should then have about 3 or 4 females on it. Given it isn’t, might it be that female selectors are more likely to favour male artists than male selectors female artists? Or even, is it that male selectors are more forceful and persuasive in their opinions than female selectors, thus pushing through more of their favoured artists? Now I’m sure Hélène Guérin and Sue Hubbard are convincing and sure of their views, but the fact remains only 10% of the list is female.
Another thing that also strikes me is that the male/female divide is fairly easy to spot given gender specific names, but what is hidden are other socio-economic or diverstity statistics (state educated v. privately educated artists, north/south, class or ethnicity…)
In the work place it is a well established fact that people tend to hire staff that resemble themselves, which is why its good practice to remove names from CVs when they are being revieweed. But you can’t change people’s biases once they are in a room with a candidate. In the art world in some ways the fact that you are mostly being judged on your work not yourself should mean that these biases are removed. However, if your concerns and context are alien to the selector, there is much less of a chance that they will see or feel your work in its best light.
Do you think there is any truth in my hypothesis? and in which case how do we correct it so that women and other minorities have equal opportunities in the hard environment?
