Art you've helped support: October highlights

Every month we spotlight works of art that we've been able to fund recently, thanks to your support. This month’s picks are striking works by two previous winners of the Freelands Award.
It’s thanks to Art Fund members and donors that we're able to support museums across the UK, helping them to buy and share works of art and get exciting new projects off the ground.
This month we’re highlighting works by Veronica Ryan and Lis Rhodes that are being acquired by museums as part of the Freelands Art Fund Acquisition Scheme, designed to help museums increase their holdings of contemporary work by women artists.
Ryan was the 2018 recipient of the Freelands Award – which enables a UK arts organisation to present an exhibition, including significant new work, of a mid-career woman artist – and Rhodes was the winner of the prize in 2017. As we eagerly await the announcement of this year’s winner, we’re taking a close look at the works you’ve helped support by these fantastic artists.
Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for the winner’s announcement, and in the meantime take a look below. And don’t forget, you’ll get great benefits when you visit museums you’ve supported with a National Art Pass.
A cabinet of curiosities
Exclusion Zones I (2021) by sculptor Veronica Ryan is a work of stark contrasts. Made from contradicting materials, including the hard and the soft, the manmade and the found, this intricate shelving system pairs an industrial aesthetic with the softness of handmade and organic items.
Each shelf contains an object of particular significance to the artist, evocative of a personal cabinet of curiosities, and nods to Ryan’s interest in stacked, vertical forms.
Exclusion Zones I will find its home in the collection at Leeds Art Gallery, in a county known for producing some of Britain’s most celebrated sculptors, including Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore.



A trio of socio-political films
Three films spanning a 40-year period of experimental filmmaker Lis Rhodes’ career will join the collection at the Hunterian in Glasgow. These works, from different stages in the artist’s career, demonstrate how she has continuously stripped the art of filmmaking back to its roots and tackled powerful topical themes.
Pictures on Pink Paper hails from the early days of Rhodes’ career and is the only one of the trio in colour. Made in 1982, it explores gender inequality, looking at how women have come to be associated with 'nature', and men with 'culture'.
Dissonance and Disturbance, created 30 years later in 2012, in black in white, is a combination of three of the artist’s films, linked together by an overarching soundtrack. It invites the viewer to question the relationship between neoliberalism and violence.
And finally, Ambiguous Journeys, a more recent work created in 2018, also in black and white, sees Rhodes continuing to explore this topic, specifically how neoliberal regimes have led to the deprivation of migrant workers.
Ambiguous Journeys (2018), Dissonance and Disturbance (2012) and Pictures on Pink Paper (1982) will join the Hunterian’s growing collection of varied contemporary work.


Membership gives back: The National Art Pass helps museums to buy and share works of art for everyone to enjoy, as well as run exciting projects that connect more people with art. Find out more.