Semi-Perfect Containers.
Tue 9th Jan 2018
In my print practice, based at Leicester Print Workshop, I work across multiple mediums and concurrent projects simultaneously. I use different print processes for different pieces of work but always with a desire to play and to push this conventionally 2D medium into 3D, or even 4D by taking it into film. My means of making is always ideas led. First the what, then the how.
Asked to be part of an exhibition of stone lithographers who make work at Leicester print workshop I embarked on a new piece in collaboration with another female artist, Anna Reading, who makes films as part of her sculptural practice.
As a late middle-aged woman I find the representation of women and the female form within society ever more grating. Women’s roles, aspirations and expressions of self are contained and prescribed by an overbearing masculine formula of what it means to be female and how females should think and behave.
I feel women are boxed in, their lives prescribed by a set of rules and judgements that differ from those of males. This new piece of work unpacks some of the complexities inherent in the female dichotomy. We are ourselves but also perform as we perceive we should, with ultra feminine desires, fictionalised body form, ordained beauty, as domestic goddesses, profuse child bearers and raisers, as career women and as the juggler supreme. To be female is a confusing state.
In this piece of work I examined these issues using a flattened out box form as a template onto which I lithographically printed three ages of womanhood. Three grid patterns representing female skin from youth, through middle age to old age.
Skin is our primary boundary between our inner selves and the outside world. Skin is the box that contains the physical mush of organs and flesh and our mental notion of self. Our skin is the barrier between the outside and the inside. It protects us from invasion by the elements whilst keeping our shape.
The flattened out box shape is a metaphor; it is an external surface seemingly advertising the content. It is to be gazed upon, and in this context prescribed femininity is projected onto it. But what is really held within the box? The folded box encases the internal self, real female feelings, thoughts, longing, insecurities and secrets.
Sometimes being boxed-in is a positive. To be contained and to have boundaries can be good. It makes one feel secure and can be convenient at certain stages in one’s life, such as motherhood. And to have a space of one’s own is liberating, but being boxed-in can become restrictive and quickly becomes a trap that is hard to escape from. Negotiating between being boxed in, or just a receptacle of prescribed mannerisms and an autonomous and respected being is hard.
In collaboration with another artist, who makes films as part of her sculptural practice, a stop animation will be made which focuses on hands interacting with the printed boxes. Hands are the most visible part of our anatomy; they show clearly the changes that occur to our skin’s feel and elasticity, from small delicate fingers to strong youthful hands to scarred, dried and lined paws of age.
The film will show the printed boxes being cut, folded and assembled. The film will then be projected in the gallery over a hung display of the printed boxes in various states, from completely constructed to completely flattened out. By projecting the moving image over the static box forms the imagery will be secondarily disjointed and the multiplicity of perspectives I want to explore revealed. I hope the film of the box assembly will signify the intricate balance of personal space, body awareness, objectification and boundaries.
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On this project I am working with another female artist, Anna Reading. I will do the lithography printing and Anna will create the stop animation film. We will work together on the final production and display, the hanging of the boxes.
Normally I work in isolation so this is an exciting development for my practice. Being in dialogue with another artist leads to a mutation of ideas. Through shared conversation an initial thought can be verbalised, developed, expanded and the means of presentation and medium can change.
Anna Reading works with sculpture, installation and animation. Her practice is rooted in an interest of boundaries and borders and the uncertainty of where one thing ends and another begins. Underpinned by a fascination with paradox, the works often play with the division of inside and outside, as well as the blurring of the body and its built environment.
Reading works with animation as a sculptural medium because it allows for objects to be activated and described. Hand drawn, looped animations of floating objects consider repetition, time and motion. The animations are projected to integrate with the exhibition space, as well as across sculptures, blurring the line between where the work ends and the environment begins.
