Gazelli Art House released the following statement yesterday:
“On the occasion of Pauline Boty’s birthday, we are pleased to announce that a selection of five portrait photographs of Pauline Boty by photographer Micheal Ward are now in the collection of MOCA, LA. Pauline Boty was also photographed by, among others, David Bailey, Lewis Morley, Michael Seymour and Roger Mayne and Ward’s images undoubtedly number amongst her best and most well-known portraits.
‘Pauline Boty lingers intensely in the minds of those who knew her. She exhibited with all the leading figures of British Pop, held a well-received solo exhibition in London in 1963 and created a vibrant, innovative body of work that enriches Pop Art from a female perspective …The mores of that time dictated that, as a woman, you could be either sexual or serious and most women artists, needing a footing in the male dominated art world, hoped the fact they were women would not be noticed. Boty rejected that binary choice and refused to relinquish either her ambition as a serious artist or her right to an female identity and sexuality …Finding form to express a proactive, autonomous, female sexuality, she encoded her own orgasm in one work and in 5-4-3-2-1 celebrates dancing to pop music and the sexual anticipation that it brought: a banner declares ‘Oh for a FU…’.
Having reached full cultural visibility, Boty and her work are available to speak to the concerns of a current audience negotiating an ever more media saturated and pornified landscape. How to seize life, relishing mass cultural pleasures while also maintaining a steady critique of its negative effects.’– Pauline Boty: A Portrait (extracts).”
Further information
Gazell Art House,
39 Dover Street,
London W1S 4NN
Tel: +44 207 491 8816
Gallery website: [link]
Pauline Boty 