Sarah Maloney's Pleasure Ground
A Feminist Take on the Natural World
Sarah Maloney’s Pleasure Ground: A Feminist Take on the Natural World is the first major survey of contemporary sculptor and textile artist Sarah Maloney, RCA. Recognized for her representations of botanicals and the human body, Maloney uses media ranging from embroidery to bronze to challenge ideas of “women’s work,” craft, and artistic labour. Maloney looks at Western history and culture through a feminist lens, and the results are depictions of plants, bones, and organs that reference gender, pleasure, desire, and power.
Sarah Maloney’s Pleasure Ground showcases Maloney’s artwork from her thirty-year career, with the selection of work exemplifying her explorations of sexuality, reproductivity, economics, and colonial systems of representation. Accompanying a nationally touring exhibition opening first at Art Windsor-Essex before moving to the MSVU Art Gallery, Halifax, in the spring of 2024, Sarah Maloney’s Pleasure Ground features essays by exhibition co-curator Laura Ritchie, textile scholar and curator Sarah Quinton, and Art Gallery of Nova Scotia CEO Sarah Moore Fillmore, as well as 70 full-colour images of Maloney’s provocative and joyful work.
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Laura J. Ritchie is the Director of Institutional Advancement at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. Previously an independent curator and art consultant, she is a fellow of the Getty Leadership Institute and a Mt. Allison and Western University alumna. Former Director of MSVU Art Gallery in Halifax, Laura has worked in collections, exhibitions, and administration with the New Brunswick Museum, New Brunswick Crafts Council, New Brunswick Arts Board, Museum London, Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery, the Commonwealth Association of Museums, Art Gallery of Alberta, and Kelowna Art Gallery. Laura recently co-curated the touring exhibition and edited the publication Sarah Maloney’s Pleasure Ground: A Feminist Take on the Natural World.
