Domestic Mottoes, sculptural installations in a domestic space, Park Avenue, St Ives, 2006
Playful language and domestic objects that evoke childcare, child birth and inequality.
Loaded Object bitumized pram, granite egg stones, and slate text.
The double word play on load refers to the way mothers are loaded with responsibility, and represented incorrectly in stereotypical ways. Mothers are bearers, loaded with the expectations of the institution of motherhood yet denied individuation and Subjectivity.
The bitumen paint on an old pram is a metaphor for the categorization of mothers, who are tarred with the same stick. The heavy ovoid granite stones make the pram useless, too heavy to push or move. A metaphor for motherhood that becomes impossible, immovable, it is museumified, labelled, instititutionalized and confined to single representations.
The Caged Bird Sings, installation with sound, typewriter, text, kingfisher and cage
One mother describes the experience of motherhood as feeling like
‘ a caged bird, sitting loyally singing on its perch’ (Parker, R., Torn in Two: Maternal Ambivalence, 1995).
A large parrot cage as been gilded and with the sounds of water, kingfisher calls and a type writer tapping away. Not a typically domestic bird, the kingfisher was used by Jung as a symbol for the process of making unconscious thought, conscious – just as kingfishers pull fish out of water. The texts spewing from the typewriter are a collage of stories and pleas for escape – from drudgery, expectation and guilt.
Add & Divide, found object (old hospital screen, 3.5m x 2.5m), red paint, latex, bitumen, muslin, text.
A hospital screen is a metaphor for the liminal moment of birth. Much feted and under-represented, it is a private/public moment shared here with a detailed written personal description of giving birth for the first time. It is an event that is difficult to read; it is ambivalent, divided and often derided as Other.
Detail of The Caged Bird Sings, cage, typewriter and text.
View other domestic sculpture works.