THE great Louise Bourgeois has an international reputation as an artist and sculptor – but will always be most widely known for her giant spider sculpture, which gives its name to the title of a film being shown at Dorchester Corn Exchange on Wednesday 3rd May at 7pm.

Coinciding with Dorset Museum’s Artist Rooms: Louise Bourgeois, Dorchester Arts is showing the extraordinary documentary, The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine, filmed between 1993 and 2007, exploring the life and work of one of this celebrated and influential figure.

The film, directed by Marion Cajori and Amei Wallach, takes the viewer into the world of a legend of modern art and an icon of feminism, showing the artist in her studio and with her installations, shedding light on her intentions and inspirations.

On screen, the nonagenarian Louise Bourgeois is magnetic, mercurial and emotionally raw – an uncompromising artist whose life and work are imbued with her ongoing obsession with the mysteries of childhood.

Louise Bourgeois has for six decades been at the forefront of successive new developments, but always on her own powerfully inventive and disquieting terms. In 1982, at the age of 71, she became the first woman to be honoured with a major retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. In the decades since, she has created her most powerful and persuasive work, including the series of massive spider structures that have been installed around the world.