Collage isn’t a technique I’ve made much use of in the past, my previous chopping up of found images has always been reductive rather than additive. (removing areas with a sharp scalpel or a digital airbrush) But as a thinking and drawing process goes it has proved fruitful of late.
Recent changes in my life have affected my practice in interesting ways. I became a mother 18 months ago, and recently gave up my external studio space. Both these factors have changed my work in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Becoming a mother didn’t soften me (my work anyway) if anything it sharpened my edge. I’ve become acutely aware of my role as a woman, of what is expected of me as a mother.
I attended a discussion recently to examine the continuing influence of Laura Mulvey’s seminal text ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, the organiser kindly screened my film, Torture The Women, alongside a selection of contemporary artist’ films at the Feminist Library. The discussion was highly productive, although the setting was far from salubrious, The Feminist Library is on it’s uppers and may soon lose the building it has occupied since the seventies. There were a lot of angry young women in that room.
We discussed contemporary culture, the film industry, the art industry and politics, motherhood and being a woman.
When I got home I discussed these things again with myself, and started making collages about being a woman. These collages are just about that. There are film references, because it’s an easily digestible reference palette, and there’s crisp delineation, surreality, an appreciation of the material qualities of paper, and a dash of paint and humour. But mostly they are about being a woman.
