- Venue
- PHOENIX & BRIDGE GALLERIES
- Location
- South West England
Looking through the glass door of the main gallery of the Phoenix, Exeter I was interested to see that the gallery was in the process of mounting a new exhibition. I was wrong. The exhibition was up and awaiting an audience. I walked in and looked around. There were large photographs on the far end wall. On moving closer I saw they were of sheep, facial portraits of sheep, titled “ Good Mother”. Each sheep had received an award for being a good mother. The awards were mounted below each portrait. I read “ My piece voices the expectations surrounding women to be good girls, to be beautiful, or loving mothers.”
I was then distracted by shirts made from unbleached linen hung on coat hangers suspended from the ceiling. Images and writing was printed onto scraps of material and feathers which were machine sewn on to the shirts. These shirts showed no sign of ever warming a body. I read that the shirts were metaphors for those who were no longer there.
The photographs on the walls were in aluminium frames, well printed, with plenty of white space around them. Women’s work and domesticity was implied somewhere. How nice and neat everything was. Books, whose contents had been selected and printed, lay on the back of a fleece. Could this be a reference to the women, or their way of life; are they being fleeced? Dare I put my mucky little fingers on the books? You know the feeling, like when you walk into a house and you feel you should take your shoes off. I couldn’t help thinking that the women whose lives were the subject of the show, women who plucked turkeys, would have to take off more than just their muddy shoes before entering this space.
I left the first room and moved into another part of the gallery. There I found another book, larger this time. Sitting on the stool provided, I began very carefully to turn the pages, which were sandwiched between tissue paper like a wedding album. It was in the form of a diary. Each page had reproduced pencil drawings and text, the layout of which had been carefully designed, illustrating the journey the artist had taken. Was this book art I asked myself, or was this the diary of a 21st century lady. I closed the book and moved into the final space.
This contained a metal kitchen unit, the sort that was found in many kitchens from the thirties to the sixties. Inside there was more writing photocopied and pasted onto the doors together with pots of jam and preserves. I must admit I was losing interest and becoming annoyed. I moved towards two beautiful wooden Edwardian specimen chests. Chests, great, I thought. I wanted to be fascinated. In expectation that each object I found would be a reminder of those things collected from a journey, I opened the first drawer very gently waiting to enter a world where secrets are revealed, love lingers along with a forgotten mothball. I tried another drawer, which contained a piece of floral material.
I realised this was supposed to be part of a story, a story of experience. Yet why did I not respond to it, why was I so disappointed? Later, I realised, that any sense of genuine involvement had been lost in a neat and tidy process, a process that had laundered and bleached authenticity. There had been no transmutation of the collected material. It had not been reworked or mutated sufficient to reveal, unfold, inform let alone to intrigue or astonish. What I had missed was a sense of soul. Of passion, of women who worked hard who were tired most of the time who put the demands of their livelihoods before the neat and tidy for its own sake.
Yet, there is a message in this show: the sense of continuity through generations engaged in the same activities and how it is preserved and established through memory. But I wonder how many people other than those who have an arts degree, who can reference the various approaches, will get the message. I found the visual impact of the exhibition minimal. What it lacked visually it certainly made up for in words. The web sites covering this project are far more interesting.
