In the tutorial, Mona said I could be playful with the work and add something unexpected in it and to incorporate the irrational and to think about the textures of the materials. I randomly had an image of my sculptural shapes with a bra hanging off. The sensuality of the red bra is juxtaposed with the monochromic shapes that look like sheets of metal.

Most of Louise Bourgeois’ works expressed concern with psychoanalytic content, mostly dealing with the objects relations theory, researched by Melanie Klein. Bourgeois’s works on paper and sculptures (The Bad Mother, The Good Mother, I do, I Undo, Redo) are to do with the relationship between the child and mother. With further research into psychodynamics, the child interacts with a ‘part object’; exemplified by the breast. The ‘good’ breast is the one that gratifies the needs of the child (i.e. feeds the child), whilst the ‘bad’ breast is the one that is absent; what doesn’t gratify the needs of the child.

A bra is a garment that holds something private: breasts, but equally desires that isn’t displayed publicly. Whether that is or isn’t displayed publicly is a debate – there’s an article about the free the nipple movement – which was about bras acting as censors that led to breasts becoming fetishised.

I picked up something interesting in the lecture on feminism a few weeks ago. There was an overlap between art associated with feminism and psychoanalytic content. This was evident in Yayoi Kusama’s earlier work with the phallic structures, and with Meret Oppenheim’s  surrealist teacup, saucer and spoon, Le Déjeuner en fourrure – coincidently she was interested in psychoanalysis and followed the teachings of Carl Jung.