Painter Lisa Brice challenges the traditional depiction of female figures passively portrayed in interior spaces. The opening exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ’s new London building, Keep Your Powder Dry, is the artist’s response to the erosion of safety in the current socio-political climate. Through her works, Brice encodes collective assertion and a bold defense, signaling the triumph of the oppressed.
The exhibition presents a dynamic passage of empowerment through three sequential groups of paintings placed across the building’s different spaces. The artist’s characters are not ordinary victims; they are David against Goliath, Judith against Holofernes. While nurturing this warrior spirit, Brice draws inspiration from violent art-historical imagery by masters like Gentileschi, Caravaggio, Manet, and Magritte. She even references figures from Honor Blackman’s 1965 Book of Self Defence, where men are beaten by a siren in judo attire.
Black, Red, and Sisterhood
Brice’s palette shifts away from the vibrancy of her earlier works, reduced in all three sections of the exhibition to somber tones of black, red, brown, and gray. This tonal restraint offers a valuable nod to Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery and Francisco de Goya’s Black Paintings series, particularly Atropos (The Fates).
The artist transforms the intimate observations of passive female groups frequently seen in 19th- and early 20th-century French painting into a sullen solidarity of resistance in her own works. Figures painted along a bar’s horizon line stand ready for action with makeshift weapons in hand. In another painting, these combative bodies appear as spectators in a fight club illuminated by smoky light. Here, a parade of athletic warriors poses with mirrors, upending our gaze.
This exhibition asks us to imagine the potential of collective action against oppression or bullying. Lisa Brice’s art is a powerful and shattering contemporary manifesto declaring that female identity is no longer an object but a forceful subject, ready to stand against adversity.
Exhibition Details
- Artist: Lisa Brice
- Exhibition Title: Keep Your Powder Dry
- Venue: Sadie Coles HQ, Savile Row, London
- Dates: On view until 20 December 2025
