Rachel Whiteread is one of Britain’s leading contemporary artists. As the first woman to have won the Turner Prize, Whiteread is an important figure for many contemporary female artists especially in having developed a way of working that is not focused on women’s issues or on an explicitly feminist view point.
Emin’s work as part of the Young British Artists movement placed her firmly within a key legacy that was to affect the development of art in Britain for years to come.
Saville can be credited with updating figurative painting for contemporary art and her unidealized paintings of predominately women’s bodies can also be related to Feminist art and Performance art by innovators such as Mary Kelly, Ana Mendieta, Cindy Sherman, and Carolee Schneemann.
Early success allowed Lin to watch perceptions of her work evolve dramatically over the years. Initial resistance to her work gave way to widespread public admiration for pushing the boundaries of what a memorial is. Her impact on other artists has been widespread in all fields, but perhaps most especially in conceptual sculpture and public art.
Kiki Smith was one of the first artists to distinguish figurative work within the art world after years of abstraction and Minimalism had dominated the scene. She is considered a pioneer in restoring the figure as acceptable subject matter in contemporary art.
Roni Horn played a major role in developing the visual and material language of Minimalism. From the 1980s onwards, she began to create sculptures that picked up on the movement’s interest in materials, yet ventured into Post-Minimalism by emphasizing the centrality of the viewer’s mind and body to the work’s meaning.
Abramović, who has referred to herself as “the grandmother of Performance Art,” was part of the earliest experiments in performance art, and she is one of the few pioneers of that generation still creating new work.
Elsa Beatrice Kidson became a world leader in the research into magnesium deficiency in apples, and did extensive work on the vitamin C content of fruits, the relationship between calcium deficiency and the disease bitter pit in apples, and the link between mineral constituents and nutritional diseases in tomatoes. Her research was of fundamental significance to horticulture and, especially, to the fruit-growing Nelson region.
Ilse von Randow would become a central figure in the development of modernist craft weaving in New Zealand. Her hand-woven textiles were quickly taken up by the local avant-garde and in 1952 she was awarded the Esmonde Kohn Prize for excellence in the applied arts by the Auckland Society of Arts.
With the establishment of the Māori Women’s Welfare League in 1951, Rangimārie joined as a founding member. She began teaching traditional Māori weaving to women within the community as well as in schools. She wanted to retain the traditional art form, which at that time was in jeopardy, and the league proved an ideal platform for its revival.