Ania Ready

I also Fight Windmills

ronapainting gallery

13-29 April 2023, Open Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00

I Also Fight Windmills is a photographic series by Polish-British artist Ania Ready, inspired by literary texts written by the modernist, trilingual and largely forgotten author of Polish origin Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska (1872-1925) who died in a mental asylum in the UK. Ready visually reimagines Sophie’s story of a migrant woman from Eastern Europe who travels west to Paris, New York and London to find employment, and more importantly to fulfill her creative ambitions of becoming a writer. The rigid rules of the old societal order, lack of opportunities for women, poverty and disillusionment lead to her mental instability. The heaviest blow comes with the loss of her partner – the modernist French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska – in the First World War soon after she sent him a rather mean-spirited letter.

The works in the exhibition explore the themes of displacement, creativity, loneliness, a disempowering sense of guilt, and social exclusion. Ready utilises impersonation and the performative aspect of photography to bring to life an undeservedly forgotten female writer and her works, stigmatized in the past for her incarceration in the mental asylum. 


Through enactment and staging Ania Ready recreates the emotions elicited by extreme living conditions, and expresses them in black and white photographs of cinematographic quality. In this solo show the images are accompanied by audio recordings of excerpts of Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska’s works.

About the Artitst

Ania Ready (born 1979) is a Polish-British photographic artist based in Oxfordshire, UK. She has an MA in Literature and Linguistics from the University of Gdańsk, Poland. Her work centres around notions of belonging and alienation, memory and amnesia. She has a special interest in the topic of femininity and madness. Her main focus is photography, but she also engages with other art forms like collage and alternative, cameraless photographic processes. Ania has exhibited her work internationally in group and solo shows at Modern Art Oxford, Pitt Rivers Museum, Irving Contemporary Gallery, Auckland Photo Festival in New Zealand, Riga Photomonth in Latvia, INTERPHOTO Photo Festival in Poland and many other places. This year she’s published her first book ‘I Also Fight Windmills’ (VIKA Books, 2023).

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Events

Exhibition opening at ronapainting gallery: 13 April 2023 18:00 - 20:00
Artist talk: 15 April, 10:00 (early opening for the artist’s talk)
Meet the Artist in the gallery: Tue 18 April afternoon;  Thursday 20 April morning, Wednesday 26 April lunchtime, Saturday 29 April


Getting there from the train station: 

Follow for the Oxford City Centre (13 min walk)

From the bus station (7 min walk)

Getting there

ronapainting gallery

34 Walton St, Oxford OX2 6AA

wheelchair accessible; no toilet
13-29 April 2023, Open Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00

Getting there from the train station: 

Follow for the Oxford City Centre (13 min walk)

From the bus station (7 min walk)