Inside the pauline boty exhibition at gazelli art house. located at dover street mayfair london uk

Displaying Boty’s work most recently is the Gazelli Art House, which opened in London in 2010. The founder, Mila Askarova, first opened the gallery in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 2003. With the gallery, Askarova aims to show the work that artists produced in their prime, reigniting a discourse on pieces that may be forgotten, or may have gained a different relevance in society over time. She focuses on diversity, showing artists from many places and backgrounds. The gallery writes of Boty; “[she] waylaid convention with her fearless exploration of femininity, societal norms, politics, and popular culture.

Eschewed the esteem of her male contemporaries, and customarily eclipsed by preoccupations with her beauty and the tragedy of her untimely passing, Boty’s artworks are today venerated as climacteric within the cultural discourse surrounding the period”.

It is wonderful to see the actions of this gallery reintroducing Boty’s pieces in a time that is more tuned in to the work of the artist rather than their appearance. Boty suffered much of the oppressions that she discusses within her art – for instance objectification and a disregarding of her work in place of her looks.

Exhibitions such as this honour her talent, recognising the importance of her female voice and her vital part in the UK Pop Art movement. Through looking at Pop Art in the UK, I have come to believe that the most prominent aspect of it is the visualisation of a new future. Much of the artwork takes images and concepts that are already in existence, and uses them to build something better.

This puts forward the idea that such changes are possible, as nothing truly ‘new’ has been used to create them. There is a bending of the constructs that exist within our society, a combining of things that would not usually belong together, like in