The Society of Women Artists 161st exhibition 

The 161st annual exhibition of the SWA was held at the Mall galleries in London. The exhibition opened on Tuesday 6th September with our traditional guest evening in collaboration with Breast Cancer Now.  During this evening, Roger Jelley conducted an auction of works generously donated by members, 100% of the proceeds of which were donated to BCN, as well as a percentage of all sales made on the evening.

The SWA’s Royal patron, HRH Princess Michael of Kent, was unable to attend but her loyal commitment to the SWA is such that she arranged for her husband, HRH Prince Michael of Kent, to officially open the exhibition at 11.00 am on Wednesday 7th September and present the awards so generously offered by our many loyal sponsors. We are extremely grateful to His Royal Highness for standing in at short notice and for taking the time to see all the works, and meet and take photographs with many of the artists.  Prince Michael was charming and entertaining and made our preview day a very happy and special occasion.  

The Private View day was followed by our fourth Young People’s Art Initiative fund-raising evening at which we were graced by the glamorous presence of Dame Zandra Rhodes and inspirational Guest Speaker Eve Feilen.

The exhibition continued with a great number of visitors and received extremely positive reviews by some renowned art critics as well as enthusiastic feedback from our visitors.  We were complimented for the contemporary style of curation as well as the outstanding quality and diversity of the 469 works on show.

Our visitors enjoyed interesting demonstrations from members: Julie Collins, Catherine Beale, Michele Ashby and Cathy Read.

The SWA’s growing reputation as a modern and forward-thinking society is attracting some outstanding artists some of whom become our future members. We take the concept of the Open exhibition seriously and take pride in representing a high percentage of the open submissions alongside the works by our talented members.

We all look forward to our 162nd open exhibition and will endeavour to continue in our progressive fashion to put on an even greater exhibition in 2023.

Helen Sinclair PSWA

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The review by Katherine Tyrrell of Making a Mark BlogSpot can be found here .