‘But in the darkness of the night, what haunts us are not broken systems but the faces of the broken girls. So, so many. All the time.’ Suzanne Moore, The Guardian, 2015
I looked back on my blog posts recently and realised that it’s four and a half years since I wrote about the ceramic figurines that make up the work of ‘Sweet Nothings.’ My intervention was to gag the mouths of the figurines with Elastoplast, demonstrating the way in which young girls and women are so often silenced and made to feel powerless. What struck me upon re-reading this post from 2015 is how pertinent it is – still.
The ‘Sweet Nothings’ ceramic figurines are set to make it back into the public eye again shortly. It seems pointless to write another blog post about them – nothing sums up the sentiments and high emotions around the subject of unsolicited exploitation of girls and young women more than the Suzanne Moore article, I feel. It coincided with making the work and Moore’s observations ring as true now, as they did then – a sad and uncomfortable truth.
From my blog post, March 2015:
‘Sweet Nothings‘ is a piece of work made up of small china female figurines. The figurines are of girls, not women – all bows & frills, sweet & subservient-looking in their stance; placed on a dressing table, faces turned to the mirror. It’s not obvious at a first glance, but all the mouths of the young girls are taped up – gagged and silenced by a strip of Elastoplast. Just like the girls and women Suzanne Moore discusses in her article, they have no voice.’
To read the entire post on my ‘Keeping It Going’ blog, click on link below:
https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/keeping-it-going-1/date/2015/03/
And to read Suzanne Moore’s full article, click here:
