Ever since Linda Nochlin asked in 1971, ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’, art history has been probing the female gaze. Through scholarship and exhibitions, readings have been put in place to counter prevailing assumptions that artistic creativity is primarily a masculine affair.

The exhibition ’50/50; Fifty Works by Fifty British Women Artists 1900–1950′ functions as a corrective to the exclusion of women from the ‘master’ narratives of art. It introduces fifty artworks by known and lesser-known women – outstanding works that speak out.

First opened in December 2018 at Mercers Hall in the City of London, and touring to the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery at Leeds University in April 2019, the exhibition celebrates and ensures the legacy of an important centenary, the 1918 Representation of the People’s Act, which gave women over the age of 30 the right to vote.