Year Five of my degree appeared to involve a lot of experimentation with the darker side of my psyche. It’s a strange affair, making art; sometimes I search for ideas and become dejected, feeling that the whole process is just a waste of time and then something happens and an image emerges out of nowhere. The idea for this work came to me late one afternoon just as the shops were about to close. I was in the studio and a visiting lecturer was being critical of a project I was participating in, which involved making large fabric mobiles (a little like dream-catchers). She commented that she felt I was wasting time making these objects and implied that they were clearly not ‘cutting edge conceptual art’. As it happened though, making these was part of my professional practice and I had agreed to make them for an event which I felt was a fair idea, given it was the professional practice side of this that was important. I suddenly had an internally angry moment and found myself wanting to carry on this conversation by making some work to sum up my frustration. I managed to get to QD (a local budget shop) within about five minutes of them closing and bought six packets of condoms. I then went back to the studio and my ‘Wet Dream Catcher’ began to take birth.
I felt that this was a particularly edgy piece of work, and it came from a place of anger. In terms of making work for therapeutic reasons, it certainly managed to assist me channel my frustration at the time. It is only with reflection now, that I am reminded of Louise Bourgeois’ Tangerine Skin sculptures that she discusses in the DVD, ‘The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine’ (2009). Bourgeois discusses how her father would peel a tangerine in such a way that the resulting peel would resemble a human figure with breasts and a pith-penis. He would also then make comments in front of family members and guests that this was his daughter Louise, although then saying, but it cannot be, as she has nothing between her legs. Later in life, Bourgeois recreated these sculptures / collages and when discussing them, would still exhibit extremely repressed and angry emotions.
Although my condom sculpture does not carry the baggage of such severe historical pain, humiliation and embarrassment; it was created out of feelings of hurt and anger, and from the comments that were made to me. I feel that the resulting artwork was worth it though, and it reminds me of work by Jake and Dinos Chapman (The Chapman Brothers). Their art is often considered as being in poor taste and is generally quite edgy and challenging. I believe that like numerous works by the Chapman Brother’s work, it is an example of ‘Abject Art’, which the Tate’s website describes as being,
“Artworks that explore themes that transgress and threaten our sense of cleanliness and propriety particularly referencing the body and bodily functions.” (www.tate.org.uk)
Referring once again to Louise Bourgeois, her piece called ‘Destruction of the Father (1974) was another work, (although this time a large installation), that dealt with her own anger and rage (at her father). In this sculpture, she re-enacts a fantasy she had at the family dining table, where she envisioned herself along with her siblings, pulling her father on to the dining table, murdering and devouring him. In the ‘Return of The Repressed’ (2012), Melanie Klein’s own theoretical view of ‘castration anxiety’ is discussed. Bourgeois’ fantasy to kill and eat her father is seen as the result of the equivalent act of castration, but in this instance, carried out by the female on the male (Bourgeois, L and Larratt-Smith P, 2012).
Reflecting on the anger I felt when I was criticised for my choice of sculptural subject matter in the sculpture room, I can now appreciate that in Kleinian terms, I felt unexpectedly ‘castrated’ by the visiting female tutor. Also, perhaps I have been conditioned to view the female gender in a ‘motherly’ and ‘caring’ role. In this instance I was not only castrated but rejected by ‘the mother figure’.
