After 2 days working on my essay I was glad to be back in the studio today. Lots of bits and pieces to do. I want to put my foot down in the studio as much as I can this week.
I started with the dress and continued to burn out the dummy on which the dress is hung. The burn marks and melting and now spray painted pink to show a dark corporeal melted body inside. She is becoming a presence and I need to be careful when she is finally presented in the degree show that the 3 legs holding up the dummy are not visible from the front, to add to the presence of a floating dress. My feeling in terms of title are something like…I am not her anymore…the sacrifice. Or something similar. I did add some text which I felt had to be handwritten and totally my own voice. I realize that the handwritten should be my own thoughts and voice and that topography and font text should be words of authority or at least the third person. I added 2 slogans to the front but I am unsure about them. It was not what I had planned in my sketchbook. I had planned to have lots of famous art quotes on the bottom and my own voice on the top but having thought about it, I was not sure if this was the right way to go. I will leave it for now and think about it.
The shoes I am enjoying very much. I want to say something like ‘walk I mile in my shoes’. About the role of women in society. The paint and printing medium ooze from the shoes, and if I am honest, like a bodily fluid and this is what I want to say really, the corporeal, the body, sex, all of it. I thought I had worked out one step for me was 17 inches and that over a mile this was 8940 so I wrote this on one of the shoes to test it to see if it worked. I need to double check my maths. And also, not really feel the way the number is displayed is sophisticated enough. Again, I need to think about this.
I have also been testing the books sculpture. I am enjoying the idea of how women have so many roles and how they juggle them all. The books seem to sum this up. By testing them in terms of layout I am learning what works better in terms of presentation. Adding the picture frame of a victorian painting adds another conversation. It could really be a separate piece in its own right.
One person will see a pissed off woman, another will know the painting, some will see the male gaze at work but how this has been high jacked by a subsequent viewer and given a new meaning, the idea of the female gaze I think has humor to it.
I am interested how the works as a whole, when displayed will say different things to different people, depending on their art knowledge. It seems important to me that anyone can take something from it, like ‘the F word can mean a critical discussion about embarrassment about a critical discourse or it can literally be a swear word. The double meaning appeals.
