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I am currently preparing for an exhibition in Glasgow called Neutral Gender. This exhibition is a body of drawing collages I created while on a residency in Turkey October 2010 and new sculptures inspired from the drawing.
I had a month to create work based on a proposal to explore spatial elements of interpreted secondary mark making. This inspired me to create work through a process of drawing and an element of spontaneous sculpture. The products of the residency were highly sexualized drawings and sculptures that made some people back out of the room or set them on edge.
One of my most influential moments in my education was coming across Lynda Benglis and her photograph in ArtForum 1974, (which if you’re not familiar with is a picture of her nude posing with a giant dildo, looking straight at you.) There was a lot of controversy surrounding this image, but what was a trigger for me was the repulsion I felt. The relationship I was able to understand about Benglis’s image was her power over her own sex and sexuality. The image is challenging but so is the message, since most nude women holding implements are soliciting or being objectified. Benglis was in control and proud of it.
I believe there is an epidemic of unhealthy attitudes about sexuality in our contemporary climate. I find it empowering to acknowledge the problem and disheartening at the scale and how it exists on such a casual level.
Media creates highly unattainable physical standards that we measure ourselves against, not just physically but it also informs and affirms gender stereotypes, the misrepresentation of sexuality, power, age, sexual orientation and enforces ideas that sex is a commodity rather than an intimate exchange between people. It is explicit and manipulative not only to our youth but to everyone’s self image and self worth, both male and female defined by media that creates and perpetuates normalcy in a sexually dysfunctional society.
The work reflects an emotive and inner landscape of sexual tension. Drawn and inspired how I feel as a human being. It will also feature soft sculpture I feel
appropriate to address the non-addressing of a subject matter.
Neutral Gender
Montgomery’s CafĂ©
9 Radnor ST
Glasgow G3 7UA
Preview Saturday June 18th 6:30-8:30 Please come down and check it out for yourselves..