P resented in partnership with NET-A-PORTER, join Turner Prize-winning artist and cultural activist Lubaina Himid, writer Lauren Elkin and Head of Modern and Contemporary African Art at Sotheby’s Hannah O’Leary to celebrate women artists, with a focus on their relationship to the city, in a conversation chaired by art historian and broadcaster Carrie Scott. The event will spotlight the current touring exhibition Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City, curated by Himid from the Arts Council Collection, to explore modern city life from a female perspective.
Meet the Panel
Lubaina Himid, Artist
Lubaina Himid was born in Zanzibar and lives and works in Preston, UK. She is Emeritus Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire and is the winner of the 2017 Turner Prize.
Himid has exhibited extensively in the UK and abroad. A major monographic exhibition of Himid’s work opened at Tate Modern in 2021. Significant solo exhibitions include Water Has a Perfect Memory, Hollybush Gardens, London (2022); Spotlights, Tate Britain (2019); The Grab Test, Frans Hals Museum, The Netherlands (2019). Selected group exhibitions include Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London; Lubaina Himid - Lost Threads, The British Textile Biennial, Burnley, UK; Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 50s-Now, Tate Britain; and Relations: Diaspora and Painting, Esker Foundation, Canada.
Lauren Elkin, Writer and translator
Lauren Elkin is a writer and translator, the author of No. 91/92: Notes on a Parisian Commute and Flâneuse: Women Walk the City, which was a Radio 4 Book of the Week, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel award for the art of the essay. She recently translated Simone de Beauvoir’s newly rediscovered novel The Inseparables. Her next book, Art Monsters: On Beauty and Excess is forthcoming in 2023. She lives in London.
Hannah O’Leary, Director, Head of Modern & Contemporary African Art, Sotheby’s
Hannah O’Leary is a director at Sotheby’s auction house, the global market leaders in Modern & Contemporary Art from Africa. She established the Modern & Contemporary African Art department in London in 2016 and spearheaded the first sale of this category in May 2017; she now oversees more sales in this category than any other auction house or fine art platform. Hannah first joined Sotheby’s back in 2005, initially working in the Dublin and Melbourne offices. In 2006 she moved to Bonhams in London, where she helped pioneer the first international auctions of South African Art and Modern & Contemporary African Art, becoming Head of Department in 2010. She returned to Sotheby’s in 2016 and over the past five years she has overseen the highest-grossing auctions of Contemporary African Art ever held, setting almost 90 world record prices for African artists. In this time Sotheby’s has consistently dominated this market, holding the record prices for all the top-selling artists from the continent.
Carrie Scott, Art historian, curator and art consultant
Carrie Scott is an American/English curator, art historian, TV presenter and art writer living in London. She founded Carrie Scott & Partners in 2008 to disrupt the art world with a business that is at once an art consultancy, gallery, and curatorial endeavor. In 2018, Scott curated the largest independent photography show at the Store x, 180 Strand, A Shade of Pale, which showcased 470 photographs and featured 320 images from John Pawson’s series Spectrum suspended in space. In 2020, Scott teamed up with curator and gallerist David Hill to present a groundbreaking exhibition on West African Portrait.
