Strangely, middle aged women tend to get a little bit frosty when you ask if you can have their discarded underwear…
Can’t imagine why!
I have been thinking about this a lot. And while I wait around for Bo, money, and my flight to New York, this is a good time to tackle it perhaps.
I was also asked today to state, in one sentence, why I choose to use discarded clothing in my work. I came up with two sentences…
“Discarded clothing brings its own history that I can use as a short cut to memory – mine and the viewers’. Stains, wear and tear, and its style and vintage all add to the narrative that I can interfere with for my own purposes.”
Up until recently, children’s clothes have been the thing. I love them, and they will continue to be used, I’m sure. They are also accessible to a wide audience. It can be difficult to engage some people with contemporary art can’t it? But I find that a little girl’s dress or a romper suit with a train on the front, if nothing else prompts the “awww cute” initial response. My interferences* with this cute factor make it easy for me to engage people in conversation. I think the work is strong. But this accessibility factor makes it fascinating to me as an artist-teacher… another point for later discussion maybe?
Anyway…
Bras…
Worn, grey, elastic perished and useless, wires missing, some with mends and alterations…
I have been given a bag of them from someone who helps in a clothing bank. These would never be offered to anyone else. I was having trouble getting bras tatty enough for my use and interest. Of course no one I knew would dare give me such an item, with me knowing it to be theirs! The confession is shaming.
But I knew they existed… how? Because I have worn them myself. There’s a confession for you!
The tatty bra is a clear indication of how a woman feels about herself. (One has to disregard those fashioned to fit and put up with out of economic necessity)
On the outside all is respectable. The outside shows how the woman wants to be seen by the world, the outside is the mask, the performance. I am becoming a little obsessed with respectability, reputation, maintaining standards…
It hits in that cloudy, edgeless era of middle age… children had, tended to, brought up… work done… either career or just a job to pay the bills… housework, caring for elderly parents, cooking, cleaning, all those stereotypically feminine roles.
Due to lack of time, and pushing yourself further down the list of things that need dealing with, the bra is the last thing on your mind. Nobody sees it. Sometimes, sadly, really nobody. It becomes the thing you couldn’t possibly NOT wear, but also, often, the thing taken off at the first opportunity. It smacks of personal neglect and lack of self esteem.
Does the tatty old bra have a connection to the libido of the wearer?
Then…
Revolution!
A new bra dawns!
The beautiful, expensive, effective, lacy, silky, sexy thing right next to your skin…
It makes you walk differently… pushes your shoulders back… chin held high.
Suddenly, what is worn underneath shows on the outside! The return of self esteem, confidence and personal pride.
This is why I am drawing old bras. I think I want to start a sort of second wave of feminism burning old bras, and getting a bloody good new one, and strutting about in it!
*interference: I have been told this word isn’t the right one to use. It has unsavoury connotations. It has been suggested that I find another. No. I like it. It has lots of different meanings, and most of them at one time or another refer to the things I do to discarded clothing.
