LONDON.- Gazelli Art House announced that a selection of five portrait photographs of Pauline Boty by photographer Micheal Ward are now in the collection of MOCA, LA. Pauline Boty was also photographed by, among others, David Bailey, Lewis Morley, Michael Seymour and Roger Mayne and Ward’s images undoubtedly number amongst her best and most well-known portraits.

"Pauline Boty lingers intensely in the minds of those who knew her. She exhibited with all the leading figures of British Pop, held a well-received solo in London in 1963 and created a vibrant, innovative body of work that enriches Pop Art from a female perspective ...The mores of that time dictated that, as a woman, you could be either sexual or serious and most women artists, needing a footing in the male dominated art world, hoped the fact they were women would not be noticed. Boty rejected that binary choice and refused to relinquish either her ambition as a serious artist or her right to an female identity and sexuality...Finding form to express a proactive, autonomous, female sexuality, she encoded her own orgasm in one work and in 5-4-3-2-1 celebrates dancing to pop music and the sexual anticipation that it brought: a banner declares "Oh for FU...".

Having reached full cultural visibility, Boty and her work are available to speak to the concerns of a current audience negotiating an ever more media saturated and pornified landscape. How to seize life, relishing mass cultural pleasures while also maintaining a steady critique of its negative effects." – Pauline Boty: A Portrait. (extracts).

Pauline Boty (1938 - 1966) was born in South London, and embarked on her artistic journey with a scholarship to Wimbledon School of Art in 1954. In 1958, she continued her studies at the Royal College of Art. Boty’s diverse body of work, encompassing paintings, collages, and stained glass, often depicted individuals she deeply admired, celebrated her unapologetic femininity, and explored themes of female sexuality. As her career progressed, her paintings began to incorporate more overt or implicit critiques of the male-dominated societal norms she confronted, thus shedding light on the inequalities of the “man’s world” in which she navigated. Her work is held in the collections of: The National Portrait Gallery, London; Tate Britain, London; Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton; Stained Glass Museum, Ely; Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; Muzeum Sztuki Łódź, Portugal; Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisboa; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington.

Michael Ward (1929 - 2011) rose to prominence as a photographer for the Evening Standard’s Show Page, capturing the emerging talents of his era, including luminaries such as Maggie Smith, Barbara Windsor, Jill Ireland, Jackie Collins, and Julie Christie.