To end the year three of London’s foremost gallery spaces are showing works by women artists. Ayse Erkmen, has installed a series of theatrical scenic backdrops through “The Curve” at the Barbican Centre – Sarah Lucas has occupied the main gallery spaces at the Whitechapel Gallery with a retrospective display of works and Kara Walker fills all three gallery spaces at the Camden Arts Centre.

Ayse Erkmen
‘Intervals’
Barbican Curve – 23 September – 5 January 2014

Ayse, formerly a sculptor, alters the space by installing a series of painted backdrops which rise and fall “on the fly” ensnaring viewers into imaginary theatrical scenes. Each piece of scenery is produced in different painterly techniques, some echoing old music halls, others grand opera. The sequence of ‘sets’ opens with an ‘archaic’ map of the central mediterranean and closes with a large clock…which strikes time to leave.
click to see images

Sarah Lucas
Situation – ‘Absolute Beach Man Rubble’
Whitechapel Galllery – 30 September – 15 December 2013

A “retrospective” exhibition of a YBA…!!! the show is less of an in depth review of a past course of events more of a flea market of desperate ideas. Sarah Lucas keeps the nihilstic obsessions of the ‘fame’ school of saatcherite artists going. The show was as chaotic as a student’s final show but lacking that sense of optimistic contemporary freshness.

Kara Walker
At Camden Arts Centre – 11 October – 5 January 2014

Kara Walker reflects on the impact of colonlalism and slavery. She confronts the ‘White Supremacists’ head on. Her wall installations of unconfined cutout ‘shadow puppet’ characters, drawn from American popular culture, and her series of imposingly energetic charcoal drawings presented in a large confined space, brutally articulate the suffering and violence of racism which shamefully persists.