Dressed for Desire, 2020-2022
Puff, 2022, framed archival pigment print, edition of 10, 54cm x 60cm
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Swell, 2020, framed archival pigment print, edition of 10, 73cm x 93cm
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Squeeze, 2022, framed archival pigment print, edition of 10, 54cm x 60cm
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Drip, 2021, framed archival pigment print, edition of 10, 62cm x 78.5cm
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Soak, 2021, framed archival pigment print, edition of 10, 54cm x 60cm
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Peel, 2022, framed archival pigment print, edition of 10, 54cm x 60cm
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Dressed for Desire explores the perceived guilt associated with the stillness of the female body in the domestic realm. Masses of dough, as representative of forbidden female flesh, are stuffed into vases. Expanding slowly the sensual and grotesque material secretes and leaks, disrupting the fragile vessels.
These works reflect on the absurdity that women should be anything but still during lockdown periods. Instead, we should be focusing our new ‘free’ time in isolation, not in quietness or contemplation, but working our bodies and modifying our food consumption, to not only survive but to blossom into ‘improved’ physical versions of ourselves as we do so. Drawing from representations of indulgence, excess, and the abject, the female body is framed as yet another absurd homeware in a parody of women’s roles in heteronormative Australia.
These works were partially created during my time as the George's River Council Artist in Residence, Carss Park Artist Cottage, Carss Park, NSW and as the artist in residence at Bundanon Trust, Illaroo, NSW.
Sequence, 2020
Sequence is a performance in which I stretch my body, in an attempt to split my legs. The work focuses on the fetishisation of beauty and pain through the flexibility of the female body and explores how this combination can create a corporeal language of feminine experience. The excruciating task draws from the notion that in Western culture, we are told from childhood that a woman’s value is in her physique. It is expected that women must endure violence to our bodies and minds to create and maintain conventional beauty norms, which in turn makes this suffering easy to accept and even familiar and comforting to endure.
This act is somewhat achievable; however, the process is slow, painful and violent. I physically split my body in half as I sink into the ground, in both an absurd and heroic act to breakdown feminine behavioural, social and beauty norms that are essential to patriarchal power. Unlike the graceful movements of the splits performed by professional dancers and gymnasts, I make a spectacle of myself and as a result, indulge in inappropriate and illegitimate expressions of femininity.
Digital video, 5:37
Fantasy (II), 2020
Fantasy (II), is the second video in the performative series Here, with a bang! that parodies the burlesque balloon pop as a catalyst to explore how women engage with absurd and playful approaches to performing their bodies seductively. The work confronts constructed expectations of feminine sexual expression, offering defiant corporeal feminism in its place.
The loud, disruptive pops of the balloons juxtapose the soft, overtly feminine dance with sounds that have violent undertones, further distancing the performance from being a pleasurable indulgence.
Digital video, 10:07
(The sound in this series is site specific. Please turn up the volume as loud as possible to fully experience the work).
This artwork was creating with funding from the 2020 Art, Not Apart festival, Canberra.
Fantasy (II), is the second video in the performative series Here, with a bang! that parodies the burlesque balloon pop as a catalyst to explore how women engage with absurd and playful approaches to performing their bodies seductively. The work confronts constructed expectations of feminine sexual expression, offering defiant corporeal feminism in its place.
The loud, disruptive pops of the balloons juxtapose the soft, overtly feminine dance with sounds that have violent undertones, further distancing the performance from being a pleasurable indulgence.
Digital video, 10:07
(The sound in this series is site specific. Please turn up the volume as loud as possible to fully experience the work).
This artwork was creating with funding from the 2020 Art, Not Apart festival, Canberra.
Here, with a bang! (I) 2019
Here, with a bang! (I) parodies the burlesque balloon pop as a catalyst to explore how women engage with absurd and playful approaches to performing their bodies seductively. The work confronts constructed expectations of feminine sexual expression, offering defiant corporeal feminism in its place.
The loud, disruptive pops of the balloons juxtapose the soft, overtly feminine dance with sounds that have violent undertones, further distancing the performance from being a pleasurable indulgence.
Digital video, 11:27.
This artwork was created during my 2018 Feminist Art Collective residency, Artscape Gibraltar Point, Toronto Islands, Canada.
Inside/Outside, 2016
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‘Men, I learned somewhat later in life, “exposed themselves,” but the operation was quite deliberate and circumscribed. For a woman making a spectacle out of herself had more to do with a kind of inadvertency and loss of boundaries’- Mary Russo I’ve been a very bad girl. C-print, 70x120cm. Installation shot, Gotham Studios, Perth. |
Movement for Action, 2016
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The eight photographs in the series Movement for Action capture different stages of the body in action as I peel myself out of a beige leotard that has been stuffed with dough. The work mocks feminine stereotypes and parodies the female nude, as my body does not conform to feminine modes of seduction.
The photographs are quite playful because although I’m nude, I’m literally bloated with yeast and dough. Being the subject of my work, I deconstruct the layers of material restraining my nude body and reclaim the agency patriarchy has over the female body, as through my material I parody displays of objectification.
Series of 8, c-prints, 62x91cm.
Parody Heals, 2015
Parody Heals engages with the notion that when submerged within an abstract painting, it is not only the body that becomes a spectacle but the painting itself. I create an absurd and comical juxtaposition between my contorted figure (as only my limbs are visible) and my tragic attempts to be feminine.
Digital video 02:10, video edited by Jack Wansbrough, sound by Tom Hogan.
Limp, 2015
Limp takes the grand, large scale paintings found in modernist abstract painting and physically destroys them with the gestures of my female body. I playfully attack the formal concerns of the masculine grid through the dynamic of movement. Unlike the characteristics of the modernist and masculine grid, my female body disrupts any linear form, precision, control and neatness over the surface of the painting.
Digital video, 03:07, video edited by Jack Wansbrough.
Spare Rib, 2015
My body becomes a living brush in Spare Rib as the work is painted on the flesh of my torso, highlighting the process from wet to dry. The body parodies action painting by mastering its wet materials as the paint expands, contracts, and cracks as it begins to dry. However, because of how this process is captured on film, the artwork never completely dries
Alongside the visually fleshy painting in Spare Rib, there is a sound component to the work where an unpleasant squelching sound is emitted in sync with the expansion and contraction of the flesh support.
Digital video, 3:50, video edited by Jack Wansbrough, sound by Tom Hogan.
My body becomes a living brush in Spare Rib as the work is painted on the flesh of my torso, highlighting the process from wet to dry. The body parodies action painting by mastering its wet materials as the paint expands, contracts, and cracks as it begins to dry. However, because of how this process is captured on film, the artwork never completely dries
Alongside the visually fleshy painting in Spare Rib, there is a sound component to the work where an unpleasant squelching sound is emitted in sync with the expansion and contraction of the flesh support.
Digital video, 3:50, video edited by Jack Wansbrough, sound by Tom Hogan.
Fail Harder, Fail Better! 2015
In Fail Harder, Fail Better! I hula hoop in a pool of white paint, constantly slipping and very clearly hurting myself as I attempt to carry out my task of creating an action painting using my body as the gestures, and the hula hoop as my brush. The work is concerned with the irrational gestures and physicality of slapstick and pain, in terms of endurance, where the body is destined to misbehave and fail due to self-inflicted violence.
Digital video, 04:43, video edited by Jack Wansbrough.
The Hula Hooping Project, 2014
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The Hula Hooping Project was a durational performance where I poured tins of brightly coloured paint on the floor and moved in the puddles to create an action painting through the typically feminine activity of hula hooping. Alongside video documentation of the work, I left the painterly outcome of the work on the walls, floor and ceiling of the gallery. The audience could walk into space, and on the work, and be physicality immersed in the gestural mapping of my movements with paint.
Performance documentation, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne. Photographs by Brendan McCleary and Heather Lighton. |
Reflection Paintings, 2013
Watercolour on paper, installation view, Melody Smith Gallery, Perth. Photographs by Kiana Jones.