A collective show of female strength

The unlovely Boxparks are unlikely places to discover some soul-elevating art, and yet within the black shipping containers near Shoreditch High Street, a popup gallery is displaying The Audacity, a winningly buzzy showcase for 21 female artists.

- Martin Robinson

The exhibition is spearhead by Stephanie Leigh Rose, an artist who works under the name STEFDIES, and whose art is the attention-grabbing central work here.

Her modus operandi is, quite simply, to take photos of herself pretending to be dead in different locations around the world. This involves her lying face down on beaches, on streets, in a children's sandpit, by a bus stop, in a town square with her head submerged in a fountain... a conceit which is funny, disturbing, frightening and then funny again.

Rose insists that the images are a “celebration of life”, and indeed the more you look at them, the more you invent your own stories around them, in Cindy Sherman manner, and realise that in any situation, death is never too far from us, so life must be lived.

And that kind of spirit bounces through this entire show which is breathtaking in its scope of artists from different cultures, sexualities and heritage.