Sylvia Sleigh’s retrospective pairs the artist’s figurative painting with ‘Refaire collection’, a polygraphic project offering a feminist rereading of art-history canons. Sleigh, a Welsh painter active in New York, is known for reversing gendered norms—placing the male nude where the female traditionally appears—and for portraits of the 1960s–70s New York art community. ‘Refaire collection’ gathers Swiss holdings and works by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Meret Oppenheim, Pipilotti Rist, Joan Semmel and the Guerrilla Girls across painting, sculpture, video, drawing and photography.

Opening: 4 June 18:00

Sylvia Sleigh’s portraiture challenges conventional representations through nuanced figuration and a subversive reversal of traditional gender roles. This presentation highlights her painterly technique, from meticulous brushwork to a restrained palette, alongside selected works that interrogate art-historical narratives and institutional biases. Viewers are invited to observe the artist’s reworking of perspective and presence, where everyday subjects gain dignity and agency and the conventions of the male gaze are critically reconfigured.

An inter-institutional conversation examines how perspectives and narratives around female and male nudity are constructed. The programme highlights the work of Sylvia Sleigh, whose practice reconsiders portraiture and the nude through the lens of 1970s feminism, subverting conventional viewing positions. Alongside collection-based displays tracing a shift from the heroic to the erotic gaze, the presentation juxtaposes representational strategies and visual languages to reveal how gender, power and desire are staged and perceived.