GLASGOW Women's Library and American feminist art collective Guerrilla Girls have teamed up to bring a billboard art work to one of the East End's most famous locations.

As part of a UK-wide commission looking at how women are represented in art and at men's bad behaviour, The Male Graze billboard is outside the Barrowlands.

The billboards have been launched as part of Art Night, a contemporary art festival which this summer is taking place across the UK for the first time and is the Guerrilla Girls' largest UK public project to date.

Adele Patrick of Glasgow Women’s Library said: "In the mid 1980s, as the seeds of Glasgow Women's Library were being sown in response to the lack of representation of women in the arts in the city, rebellion was fermenting in New York.

"The Guerrilla Girls concerns were ones we shared: anger at discrimination in the art world, the stuckness of the 'pale, male, stale' traditions and the sexism and racism at work in culture at large. "Over the years Glasgow Women's Library has crossed paths with Guerrilla Girls at conferences, art events and of course have their iconic posters in our collection.

Glasgow Times:

"We are delighted that in our 30th anniversary year we are now collaborating with these radical grande dames of the art world, bringing a billboard work to our neighbourhood in the East End of Glasgow and participating in a sold out digital event.

"Although there has been a revolution in the visibility of women artists since the two feminist groups were launched - and GWL is now something of a cultural institution in Scotland - some things, like the relatively low numbers of works by women that are acquired by publicly funded museums and the difficulties faced by women artists who are carers and parents, are as hot topics as ever and issues we feel as strongly about 30 years on."

A series of large scale billboards will be placed at famous locations, from the Barrowlands to London Bridge, countryside locations and seaside towns until July 18.

Viewers of the billboards are then asked to go to museums, do a count of naked women vs women artists on exhibition and post their findings and comments on themalegraze.com

The Guerrilla Girls said: “What Art historians call The Male Gaze, the masculine, heterosexual perspective in European and American art mostly by white men that depicts women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer, the Guerrilla Girls call The Male Graze.

"Lots of women are naked in post-colonial western art.

"Some are idle: sleeping, splayed out on beds and couches, lounging around with their friends, bathing and maybe even dancing.

"When active, there is usually a sexual element present: voyeurism, seduction, harassment, assault, rape and sometimes murder.

"When we looked into how some revered male artists used and abused women in their real lives, we saw a lot of grazing, not just gazing. So we want to ask: does art imitate life or life imitate art?"

Helen Nisbet, Artistic Director, Art Night, said: "Like so many other cultural events, Art Night has had to shift and change a lot over the past 15 months; this has been strenuous for the artists, especially amidst global catastrophe.

"However, the moments of togetherness, politics and beauty that have transpired have been awe inspiring.

"Our commission with the Guerrilla Girls typifies this.

"The work they're doing builds on decades of research and activism and through the billboard commissions they are galvanising a potentially new audience to consider or reconsider the question of who gets to be represented and who holds power."