Posing with my installation at 'Penultimatum'
I am driven to create as a method of protest toward spectatorship and subject-object relationships. This is expressed through challenging preconceived notions of how we regard objectified, eroticised and exotified subjects and groups. I navigate these themes of phallocentrism, subjectivity, classism and abjection through material, personal and sociological research. I am chiefly influenced by Julia Kristeva's theories regarding the "monstrous femme" as well as Virginia Woolf's concepts of autonomy outlined in A Room of Ones Own.
Through utilisation of erotic symbology and comedic wordplay, I play with innuendo and contentious topics like those listed above. My process begins with thorough research which is followed by a laborious material practice. I exercise these concepts through fanciful illustrative printmaking, text art, jacquard tapestry and installation. The imagery within these media employs florid, marvellous femme figures occupying phantasmagorical worlds of their own. My work often includes women marvelling at the incredulous functions of their bodies (ie. An actual bush growing out of a woman’s vagina). I often include a snake, Keith, who embodies the gay best friend archetype present in Western heterosexual popular culture.
My work is extraordinarily gruelling in that I will be cutting away at a surface or embroidering a piece of fabric for sixteen-hour shifts daily over the course of a month. I liken this obliteration of the material and self to the arduousness of day-to-day womanhood. To conclude a series and/or piece, I engage in reflective and debate-based writing to communicate the purpose, knowledge and ideas surrounding the works. This happens within the parameters of workshops, zines and academic writing.
An interest in theme-cultivating curation which deflects gaze has surfaced from my practice and I accomplish this by immersing the spectator within the work. This year I directed two self-led group shows 'Roots: Visual Arts Through the Lens of Scientific Research’ and 'Burn the Witch'. ‘Burn the Witch’ was influenced by my thesis: ‘Feminist Portrayals of the Phallus as Subversive Comedic Protest’. This essay deals largely with popular depictions of women as demonised, power-hungry vagrants and feminist interpretations of phallocentrism as an absurd farce. Since ‘Burn the Witch’ I have collectivised with three of the exhibited artists.
