Floor One Gallery hosts new exhibition from Rugby Open winner

Rosie Haynes explores the visual representations of women and femininity in Forms, an exhibition which brings together new artworks Haynes has created since graduating last year from London's world-renowned Central Saint Martins with a degree in fine art.

Throughout her studies, Haynes worked with digital collage to reconfigure the female form, manipulating and distorting found imagery to exaggerate ideologies of feminine representation.

Forms features artworks which explore contemporary and historic extremes of femininity, focusing on cinema's relationship with the female form, from bygone Hollywood glamour to contemporary digital extremes. 

Laura Mulvey's seminal essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, and Anna Biller's exploration of Mulvey's essay, The Love Witch, inspired Haynes to create the centrepiece of the exhibition, three large digital prints which engage with the visual language of the silver screen.

Sarah Holdaway, Rugby Art Gallery and Museum's senior visual arts officer, said: "As fourth-wave feminism offers 'personal choice' to reclaim problematic beauty standards, but ultimately still reinforces them, Rosie invites the viewer to think about how we engage with representations of femininity that resonates with some women, without repeating problematic forms of representation.

"Whilst some of the artworks on display push against pre-existing representations of the female form, others work to utilise more conventional forms to exaggerate already extreme depictions of femininity."

Northamptonshire-based Haynes won the Rugby Open 2020 with three pieces of digital collage, hailed by the judges as "simultaneously challenging and beautiful in equal measure."

Forms opens at the Floor One Gallery tomorrow (Saturday 11 December) and runs until Thursday 23 December.

Cllr Howard Roberts, Rugby Borough Council portfolio holder for leisure and wellbeing, said: "The Rugby Open gives both established and developing artists the opportunity to exhibit work in a professional gallery, and attracts entries from the borough and beyond. 

"Rosie Haynes not only won the Rugby Open 2020 but also the Made in Arts London x Metro Imaging Mentorship, so we're delighted to host her new exhibition at the Floor One Gallery."

The Rugby Open returns in winter 2022.

For more information about exhibitions and events at Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, visit www.ragm.co.uk