Nicky Riding

This year [2026] I embarked on a new adventure.  My aim is to deepen the research started as an Undergraduate Student with, The Intersection of Menopause with Gender and Age: An Analysis of its Representation in Western Art and Culture.  I explored themes on the duality of invisibility and hypervisibility, stereotypes and fear.  And how the perceived loss of the 3 F’s: ‘fertility, femininity and fuckability’ (Smith, 2023) all contributed to a big black hole in representation of women in the age range of 45-65 (typically when symptoms of menopause start to manifest and can end) in art and culture. 

There are more people experiencing Menopause than those that give birth – that’s 13 million people in the UK (Source NHS).  From the representations in art, media, culture and even in the feminist movement you wouldn’t know it! Qualitative research in the form of interviews, research of media, academic papers, published books and articles informed this conclusion.  In the Appendix to my Dissertation, I started the process of cataloguing art works that represented either aging in women or the Menopause.  I concluded that further research was required outside of the constraints of an undergraduate degree and I will continue to make art that fills the gap that I predict still exists in this genre.  

That work is now to be expanded as part of a Practiced Based Research PhD titled, The Ghosting of Mid Life Women in Art and Culture. Menopause. Misogyny. Missed Opportunity.  

Names of Supervisors

• Dr Helen Gorrill
• Ellie Harrison