As International Women’s Day nears and the intermittent spotlight focuses on the global majority, it's a good time to focus on some women in visual arts who, despite the odds staked against them, continue to develop their art practices.

Women are not an autonomous group and the fickle nature of the arts can be added to by personal circumstances, be it either childcare or eldercare.  

I know some women who were developing great careers until they had children and became the sole carers. Others who found motherhood and a supportive partner brought them time for their careers to flourish.

There are women working at all levels of visual art from hospitals, working with people with dementia, with those with learning difficulties and mental health issues. There are art therapists who are bringing an added clinical therapeutic aspect and those working in prisons, to name a few.

To love visual art is easier than making a career out of it, yet many try and at different stages of their lives have varying degrees of success. That success could be because of the planets aligning, or someone giving encouragement at a crucial time or buying a piece of work. It could be a chance meeting or lots of hard work. Meeting likeminded people who support your work or a part time job to fund your ideas can also be crucial.

The women in Array Collective:  Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell, Sinéad Bhreathnach-Cashell, Jane Butler, Emma Campbell, Alessia Cargnelli, Clodagh Lavelle, Grace McMurray, and Laura O'Connor have pushed off the shackles of a lack of recognition for their art with the winning of the Turner Prize. In the process they have put Belfast artists on the map and the acclaim is pushing them further ahead with their careers.

Jane Butler and Clodagh Lavelle spoke at the Reclaim the Agenda IWD rally in Writers' Square on Saturday 5th March, giving them a platform for their political and artistic activism.

Embarrassingly, some months in the city there are no women who have solo exhibitions in any of the galleries. This month however is an exception.  

But as I list them I know that there are many more that deserve solo exhibitions. Many women artists have no one championing their art or due to lack of opportunity will not get to show for a while. Yet create women will because the pulse of art continues to beat.  

One such exhibition is of the work of Helena Hamilton. A visual/sound artist, her exhibition Virtual Matter (Ambient) is at the Naughton Gallery. I first came across her when she was working at the Black Box behind the bar and constructed an installation in Pssquared Gallery asking if we had a soul, or if our interiors were simply salt.

The work catapulted her to New York and the navigation of her career has included artist residencies in Toyko and London. She recently composed sound works for film including parenting in the pandemic — Pandemonium dance film which is available on the BBC iPlayer.

For the Naughton Gallery, Helena has created a new virtual space, conceived from the last drawing she made before becoming a mother.  The exhibition "explores different ways to bring virtual objects and atmosphere into real life”  Viewers are invited to watch a video then meander along the gallery, experiencing different sounds as they walk. The stroll gave me a ASMR Autonomous sensory meridian response experience.  A neon light sculpture hangs in the gallery as if it jumped out of a video. A triptych of fragments of the video hang like a contemporary altar piece. With the increasing technical demands in some galleries and the inhumanity and flatness of the digital space, it’s interesting to see an exhibition about how “the virtual can be sensed and experienced in the real”. It played tricks on my mind.

Young at Art Children’s Festival has started and continues until Sunday 12th March.