15 Artists / 200 Years

In recent years scholars, artists, and institutions have begun to research, feature and acquire more works by women. This is important, given that historically female artists' lives and achievements have often been forgotten or overshadowed.

This story joins the movement for change by chronologically 
highlighting some of the many successful and important female artists and works that feature in the University of Edinburgh's Art Collection. 

In 2011 ECA merged with the University of Edinburgh, at which point its collection of prints, drawings, paintings and sculpture were combined with the pre-existing 350 year old University Art Collection. Included was this painting by alumni Anna Millar.

The merger not only dramatically altered the scale, scope and purpose of the University Art collection, it also radically shifted the gender balance of the artists within it, raising the number of women in the collection from around 84 to almost 630. 

The present day art collection continues to actively commission and acquire work, and over the last decade nearly 450 works by women have joined the collection; an average of nearly 60% of the total acquisitions annually.

Needlework or textile arts have traditionally been associated with women, and because Western societies have valued masculine traits over those deemed feminine, the medium has long been overlooked or dismissed in the history of art.

This piece comes from the Universities' needlework collection that has inspired students at ECA for generations. 
While little is known about the artist, we do know that these embroidery samplers were used in teaching to demonstrate the skill of the person who made it. 

Johnstone studied at ECA until 1912 and two years later she joined its staff. On marrying her colleague D. M. Sutherland in 1924, Johnstone was obliged to resign due to the 'Marriage Bar'; legislation which forbade married women from holding full-time teaching positions.

Bone was the first female artist to be commissioned to produce a permanent work on campus for the University. She was also the first woman to be elected as a full member of the Royal Scottish Academy.  

The work she created, the Ashworth Reliefs, are seventeen carved stone roundels (circular discs), all depicting animals. The work is located at the Ashworth Laboratories, Kings Buildings on the College of Science and Engineering campus. 

Bone has been described as 'the most productive [and] possibly the most connected female sculptor of the first half of the twentieth-century in Scotland.'  

Gillies was first introduced to ceramics through the Rural Women's Institute, a programme which taught women how to produce certain crafts in order to generate independent income.

Despite her prolific career, Gillies work has often been overshadowed by that of her painter brother, William, who worked at ECA from 1925 until his retirement as Principal in 1966.

Anne Redpath studied at ECA from 1913-1919 and the Moray House College of Education from 1913-1917. Due to marriage and childcare, she took a fourteen-year break after her time at school but by the 1940s she begun to paint again.

She had a prolific career and exhibited often throughout Britian. From 1944 to 1947 she was President of the Scottish Society of Women Artists and in 1960 she became the first Scottish woman to be elected an Associate of the Royal Academy.    

Hardie graduated from ECA in 1984, ten years after which she would become the youngest living artist ever to be given a solo show at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. 

Eardley was interested in depicting the realities of life, often focusing her painting on the Scottish landscape and coastline, as well as the children and families living in the expanding urban sprawl of Glasgow. 

'Bagged Potatoes' was bequeathed to the University by Hope Scott,  a patron and collector of the arts. Her donation played an important role in the development of the University's holdings and includes works from many prominent Scottish painters of the Twentieth century.

Whittle was awarded her Undergraduate Degree from ECA and describes herself as ‘an artist, researcher and curator driven by the desire to manifest self-compassion and collective care'. 

Her work usually takes the form of interactive installations which use film, sculpture and performance to consider contested histories, climate colonialism, trauma and healing.

This work takes its visual inspiration from the traditional 'fete' posters of the artists home country of Barbados.  Whittle inhabits both male and female identities in the work, as a means of interrogating the prescribed gender roles prevalent in the Caribbean.

The Common Sense by Melanie Gilligan is made up of fifteen different episodic videos, displayed on monitors positioned on a bespoke scaffold structure. The acquisition of such a significant moving image installation marked a huge advancement for the collection.

This work is also the founding work of the Contemporary Art Research Collection; an area of focus designed to enhance research and postgraduate teaching at the University. 

Future Library is a one hundred year artwork by Katie Paterson running from 2014 - 2114. Each year of this period Paterson, in conjunction with a Trust in charge of the work, commission a writer to produce an original text which will remain unread and unpublished until 2114. 

At that point, the 100 manuscripts will be printed using paper made from a forest of 1000 trees which were planted at the projects inception. 

This print operates as a form of certificate, allowing future generations to receive their anthology of books. 

Flannigan graduated from ECA in 1985. This painting from 2018 is part of the series Tear, which offers a fresh perspective on how the female form is represented.  

‘A work of art can teach you how to see it, it's a small but vital thing.’ – Moyna Flannigan 

Adekunle graduated from ECA in 2020. Her photographs speak to the sexualization and fetishization of the Black body, and  confront and often employ historical imagery and archive material as a compositional starting point.

The artist inserts herself into these works as a reminder to the viewer that the past treatment of black women still affects individuals in the present day.