Focused Intent

Works in Miniature by Contemporary Female Artists

The Point Contemporary invites you to their upcoming exhibition Focused Intent: Works in Miniature by Contemporary Female Artists. Curated by PhD researcher Caroline Gould, the exhibition emerges from themes within her research on historic female miniature painters. 

Smallness is often synonymous with a lack of importance, carrying connotations of weakness, domesticity and femininity. But size does not reflect value. As French philosopher Gaston Bachelard once wrote, ‘Miniature is one of the refuges of greatness.’ Focused Intent proposes that works in miniature convey great ambition, imagination and care. The show is a call to pay greater attention to both small things and works by contemporary female artists.

To work in miniature requires skill and focus. Artists must choose carefully which elements are most important, capturing both the essence and the detail of a bigger subject. What appears to be inconsequential, expands and intensifies on reflection. It’s no coincidence that miniature replicas and tiny toys are objects of fascination and delight. Spending time with something small carries deep emotion. 

Focused Intent proposes that in our digital, distracted and demanding world, to paint something small is an act of quiet rebellion. At the heart of this exhibition is an invitation to pay attention to something you might otherwise have overlooked. For miniature artworks do not demand our attention, they negotiate it. The Point Contemporary invites you to be still and to engage in what Simone Weil called ‘the rarest and purest form of generosity’, the act of paying attention. 

The exhibition brings together ten female artists working across an expansive range of mediums, materials and genre: from needle tins and book covers to paper and canvas, still life and portraits to flowers and abstract landscapes. United by more than size, the works exist in cohesive dialogue, rewarding close and unhurried encounters. Focused Intent invites discovery, with artists asking new questions of old friends. Anjalee Malan’s series, ‘Who makes your Fish and Chips?’, explores the international heritage of a British icon; Jayne Stokes translates familiar Cromer sites onto miniature objects, while Amanda Coleman’s figurative studies reframe self-portraiture. Lotta Teale and Rachel Hertz’s still-lifes celebrate the quiet, the ordinary and the everyday. Focused Intent suggests that the ordinary becomes extraordinary with our full attention. 

The show opens on Saturday 22nd August for five weeks. We invite you to step into a world in miniature. 

 

Supplementary Text – Curatorial Thoughts

Historically, portrait miniatures were small, intimate and highly emotional possessions. Often worn as jewellery or set into the lid of snuffboxes and pocket watches, they allowed the bearer to carry a loved one close to them. In a world before photography, miniature portraits were essential recorders of likeness, offering a pocketable proxy in periods of absence. Miniatures for mourning were also common, offering a relic-like object that could be held, kissed and cried on. Today we might carry a photograph in our wallet, or, more likely display an image on our phone lockscreen. 

Portrait miniatures appear in the novels of Jane Austen, Anne Bronte and Charles Dickens, and by the early nineteenth century there was a common understanding that many miniature painters were women. Yet the stories of these artists have often been overlooked and ignored. Art historical narratives have traditionally privileged the great, the genius and the male. My research seeks to construct a new narrative that includes the contributions of the hundreds of amateur and professional women who worked with portrait miniatures, supporting the ongoing argument that the historical figure of the artist was never exclusively male.

Such work continues today. Data from The Tate (UK) and the National Museum of Women in the Arts (USA) suggests that despite 51% of visual artists being female, just 5% of galleries represent an equal number of male and female artists. 78% of galleries represent more men than women. While historic art collections will never achieve parity, there is clearly more that can be done to ensure contemporary female artists receive their fair share of attention, representation and remuneration. This show is a small contribution to that fight.

In conversations with the artists in this show, I was struck by how many had received professional advice to abandon small works in favour of something bigger, more abstract and more “commercial”. The implication of such comments is that small paintings are not serious. This show is a critique of that assumption. The hierarchy of genres in Western art history is neither neutral nor accidental: it has long relied on exclusionary ideas of gender, class and education in classifying what counts as ‘original’ and ‘genius’, versus what is merely ‘imitative’ and ‘amateur’. It is a mistake to think that small works are not as ambitious or as skilful just because they are small. It is in this context that I call miniature painting an act of quiet rebellion. 

I also think it’s quietly radical to intentionally invest in works that transition across different spaces throughout our lifetimes, finding their way into homes, corners and nooks that could not accommodate canvases three or four times the size. Small works have always democratised the relationship between art and its audience.  It is my hope that visitors to the Point Gallery will enjoy the variety of painted works and appreciate the imagination, skill and care that has been invested into each one. 

I want to end by drawing attention to two authors whose works heavily influenced my approach to this show. The first is the academic Julia Bell. Her work, Radical Attention, highlights the importance of the art of attention and champions human creativity in a world of AI. The value of practising attention is a central tenet of this show. The second author is the French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard. I was recommended his 1957 text, The Poetics of Space, by an academic for my PhD – specifically the chapter on Miniatures. Bachelard writes, ‘To use a magnifying glass is to pay attention, but isn’t paying attention already having a magnifying glass? Attention by itself is an enlarging glass.’ As I was grappling with how to articulate the relationship between size, art and attention, I found such thoughts expressed far more eloquently than I could have hoped for. 

I fervently believe that small things have great power. I also believe in the power of intention. Such beliefs are combined in the show's title: Focused Intent. This show is an invitation; it is your choice to cross the threshold and invest your time in being with and looking at small artworks. I hope you find delight in the acts of slowing down and zooming in. 

My thanks to Richard Blades and Louise Green for their unwavering support in organising Focused Intent. I am also honoured to have represented the ten talented artists in this show. I will be forever grateful for their wholehearted belief in the show’s vision and for trusting me with their brilliant work.