When I think of scandal—when I take this word and imagine its physical embodiment—I imagine people from centuries ago, gossiping about the latest impropriety or faux pas in society. I imagine this impropriety as probably female, a so-called debasement of the societal constructs surrounding female purity.

Perhaps this gossip is in a parlour, over a cigar, or whispered behind a concertina of hand fans. Absurdly, I imagine the figures of this scene with elaborate hair, tight corsets or handlebar moustaches. In other words, when I think of scandal, I conjure a uniquely anachronistic sentiment. The stuff of novels. Why, then, is scandalisation so endemic to us now, as a reaction to the output of contemporary feminist artists? Though packaged as a legitimate appraisal of art from critics and public alike, outrage is a customary response to works emerging from the radical feminist contemporary arts scene, five decades on from the nascent feminist art movement of the 1970s.