A fellow student and I have been preparing this week for a pop-up exhibition on Monday 29 February in a specially designated white room on campus. The experience has involved another learning process as I have been using the workshop’s new laser cutter.
Our theme for the week is The Ties That Bind and my contribution to the project has been to consider the emotional and physical ties that bind an individual at birth to her mother and how those ties are severed when the child is put up for adoption.
You can see from my post on the 13 February I have been using jigsaw puzzle shapes as a basis for a future larger piece of work and this week was the week I had that opportunity.
I selected short phrases from a letter written by a mother who is relieved to find that she has finally found a home for her unmarried teenage daughter’s baby. Each piece of puzzle is from a complete rectangle of nine pieces.
Artwork ready for printing.
My work involved the technical expertise of our workshop fab technician, who guided me through the complex procedures.
The maquette coming of the laser cutter…on black card.
Light penetrating through the words…
Adjustments were made to enlarge the scale and we are off… The ‘nature of the beast’ (laser cutter) was to automatically cut away all the black, including the words which, I did not originally intend, but became an advantage because it gave the work an added fragmented appearance. It is rewarding to have these extra little surprises and I often find that my work evolves and is given more meaning through these unexpected processes!
Installation in progress…Glenda putting the final touches to her work…
Images of the final installation to follow…
Saturday drawing class at the CO3 Gallery in Colchester with Wendy Bailey…back to basics…lines and negative spaces. A worthwhile couple of hours.
Preparations underway with fellow student for 10PRJCT. Not going to give too much away at this stage – more images will follow next week…our theme is ‘Ties’ and my contribution is relying heavily on some hi-tech wizardry!
A little prep work…
Drawing of an empty Physalis pod (Pen and ink on card)
The adoptee doesn’t have a choice so they have to find a voice…
‘Talking Over You’
There are so many facets and emotions I can relate to as an adoptee and it is difficult to keep a tight focus. At the time of my adoption in the late 1950s there was no legal requirement for the birth parents to provide the adoptive parents family health records. This can cause the adoptee complications which have the potential to be serious. It also means that the child has no history, their lives are a mystery and even a puzzle with missing pieces.
I am experimenting with the puzzle idea by using letters between my birth mother and myself cut into puzzle pieces.
New Arrivals (2009) by Nicole Porter was a personal reflection on her own story as an adoptee growing up and demonstrates the unresolved feelings she has now as an adult. She cites artists like Annette Messager and Tracey Emin as influences in her work. New Arrivals presents the audience with an alternative point of view to the arrival of the unborn child, one that is hidden and often untold.
One item of Tracey Emin’s Baby Things (1998) Emin (in bronze painted to look like the real thing)
Example of Annette Messager’s work Penetration (1993-94)
Porter explored this psychological landscape by suspending a collection of various second hand baby dolls from the ceiling by their umbilical cords inside the space of an Oxfam Shop. The audience was barred from entering the shop and interacting with the dolls and could only view the installation from designated peepholes in the windows. In order to gain a better view of the work the audience were forced to look through other peepholes, but the full view was always obscured. Porter appeared to be asking whether you ever get to see the whole picture with adoption? The installation forces the viewer to see the connections as well as the separations for adoptees. The exhibition was described as ‘Awkward and uncomfortable yet intriguing’ because it made the spectator feel ‘almost like a pervert’ when looking through the peepholes and adoption can be a world of secrets and manipulated truths for some adoptees and one where they are ‘kept in the dark’ as far as their own history is concerned. http://visual.artshub.com.au/news-article/reviews/visual-arts/media-release/new-arrivals-the-sydney-building-178965
Writing in the Australian Journal of Adoption Porter describes how difficult it is to express in words what being adopted is like, especially as she has two different names, one given by her birth mother and the other by her adopted parents. She explains that the uncomfortable emotions she feels only subside when she is being creative and says that ‘Art is a means of giving form to that which cannot be expressed in words’. www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/aja/article/download/2379/2845
Scan (macro image of a section of a Physalis flower pod with seedling)
