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In Greek mythology Cerberus is a 3/many headed dog that guards the entrance to the Underworld. It was one of Hercules tasks to remove it.
This almost life?size [maybe a bit smaller, than me anyway] figure is constructed from a base of wired chicken wire, bound with painted and dyed fabric secured with black twine.
It is intended the kneeling figure kneels on the floor, heads flung back howling in anger.
The facial features, hands and feet are stitched in black thick thread.
Associations
Anger
Frustration

Bitch is a derogatory name for women, as opposed to the opposite context of a dog being a “man’s best friend” contained by binds
reds and pinks to emphasise the figure is female, and exploding

Louise Bourgeois

“Identification—the power of identification is very strong. I lend the animal, I project the animal and shape my feelings.”

Sarah Lucas made an angry art work in 1995 of a T-shirt stretched over a table with additions.  the placement referring furiously about the position of “screwing the female over a table” like another utensil for male use.

The term Bitch is in itself angry, in some ways referring to loving loyalty, but the emotion is demeaned and rejected.

When referring to a female dog people are often loath to use the term as it sounds somehow rude. Pornographic cartoons and rappers make full use of the label.

Questions

Why use this term…..to make a verbal impact, for a visual impact ….to claim it back as a strength, a fearsome image. an image that already possesses a familiar narrative and connotations, now appropriated in a unexpected way.

Lucas’ and Bourgeois’ work is strong and breaks taboos about sex and gender. Bougeois’ work is often also aesthetically pleasing and perhaps melodramatic [using fabrics breaks this ]  but Lucas goes even further in using every day objects, clothes, tables., mattresses, fruit to shock and engage.


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This tape is stitched with road sign warnings, in a triangle? ……repeatedly I have stitched MIND THE GAP and sometimes KEEP YOUR DISTANCE…..some disintegrating into part words.
I am feeling the weight of of the end of the degree course approaching. The GAP between making pieces for ARTSKOOL and my real life. Until I started at ARTSKOOL I sold my stitched work at exhibitions, I was minorly known locally for my different approach to textile art and a sense of humour. I did not reduce my work to flowers and birds [almost a certain sale] but explored and expressed the concepts in my mind, using the human figure which relates almost as well as birds and flowers. But I wanted to develop, to push the boundaries make more extreme responses to what goes on in my head.
So I started the Fine Arts degree.
Now I am finishing it, I have a body of work, large and startling fabric figures commenting on my thoughts of the situation of women in a patriarchal society. I have probably done enough to pass, but……what have I done? None of my pieces would sell, in some ways perhaps it should be categorised as OUTSIDER ART
as Wikipedia claims
the English term “outsider art” is often applied more broadly, to include certain self-taught or naïve art makers who were never institutionalized.
Typically, those labeled as outsider artists have little or no contact with the mainstream art world or art institutions. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates extreme mental states, unconventional ideas, or elaborate fantasy worlds.


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Process 1

Waiting is Over
Materials
Whole piece cotton fabric and 50m linen tape, hand stitched Approx 5’ 2” long.
Context and Influences
Marlene Dumas Dead eyed figures, corpse enclosed in claustrophobic frame
Christ……..sacrifice? futile?

Medieval tombs – wives who can no longer speak but endure in stone

Damian Hurst The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991…. [Cold Fish]
Ron Mueck something about the stillness and uncompromising
Waiting poem by Faith Wilding faithwilding.refugia.net/waitingpoem.pdf
Hand stitched text in capitals in various threads, chosen to reflect phrases. Wilding describes the stages of a woman’s life, waiting to get through supporting others, with the implication that she never has time to support herself.
Making
Figure sketched freehand on folded fabric, released from cloth and stitched together. Working on floor to accommodate length which emphasised the feeling of lying flat. Stuffed with wadding.
Questions
Should the figure be entire with no insets. Other figures see above enabled +sheer joy of making let me add chin, and feet and released figure from total prison of inert fabric.
Hands, eventually decided these should be trapped by her side…she can run but she can’t do anything creative…..
Tape, decided to add walnut ink dye, to age it? Contrast? Slow hand stitching took some months…relate to other text stitchers [Lorina Bulwer, Elizabeth Parker Agnes Richter} whose creativity was part of their endurance,
Wrapping some of tape round figure enclosed her and leaving circle of remainder revealed length of repetitious life ………….mostly hidden in both cases.


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