Nick Willing

And what curators and museum directors are telling me is, well, there is no really other artist that speaks to the toxic nature of what is happening today, as does the work of Paula Regan.

She covers more psychosocial, political, psychological issues and themes than almost any other artist I can think of.

as well as exploring fairy tales and children's stories.

And it's such a vivid and rich world that kind of speaks to all the psychotic things that are happening now.

And it means that museum directors can speak

of the themes and subjects that they want to speak about through her work, what we're witnessing or what I'm witnessing is something I had not expected to happen, which is Paula becoming, even though she's a woman, because in the art world, being a woman was...

not as favorable as being a man.

Obviously, it's the most, one of the most, still one of the most misogynistic and sexist of the arts medium.

But what we're witnessing is Paula becoming a legacy artist.

In other words, she's transcending from a contemporary artist to being somebody that even after her death still has relevance.

And that means she's going to join the big guns like Francis Bacon, even Picasso.

I agree.

In being an artist that people want to show.

That's one of the reasons she made that in 1969.

Because as you say, in those days, textile, all textile art was referred to by the art world as women's work.

In other words, it was demeaned on the ladder of art history importance.

It was at the bottom, being women's work.

So there were a group of female artists at that time, in the late 60s and early 70s, Mum was one of them, who chose to make women's work as a form of protest for the fact that they're being considered women's work.

And so she made this giant fig.

It's about a foot and a half long and a foot wide.