Untitled (2011) and detail, wool & appropriated textiles
Luis Buñuel, director of the 1967 film 'Belle de Jour', suggested that we are indoctrinated at a young age into life long sexual, social and religious patterns. But how much of our "adult" life is influenced and shaped by our childhood? Do the people, places, objects we are exposed to ingrain certain ideologies and values? Surely giving a little girl a doll so realistic she has to feed and change it is simply setting her up to expect a life as a mother, as explored in a paper published by University of Oxford's 'The Future of Human Reproduction' department in 2009.
I remember as a young girl, I would watch my grandma knit for hours, admiring the beautiful objects she produced. Then, like Mrs Willard's mat in Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar', they would become worn and eventually ruined performing their "function". Perhaps it was these memories which influenced my thoughts on the constraints of motherhood? In his work upon 'The Uncanny', artist Mike Kelley explores childhood toys and the effect which they can have, citing Freud's theory of the sensation of the uncanny. Kelley claims the uncanny to be linked with the 'art' experience; an interaction with an object which is then 'tied to the act of remembering... something long known to us, once very familiar', which I feel is key to the work above. Showing a snapshot of my partner, the unclarity of the image both immortalises and destroys the photograph at the same time. Playing upon the idea of an image or experience being "ingrained", both as fixed in memory and embedded within the fabric, this work questions the value & reliability of memories, relationships and the effects of these upon our being.
Mike Kelley is exhibiting at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art until the 15th January 2012.
I remember as a young girl, I would watch my grandma knit for hours, admiring the beautiful objects she produced. Then, like Mrs Willard's mat in Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar', they would become worn and eventually ruined performing their "function". Perhaps it was these memories which influenced my thoughts on the constraints of motherhood? In his work upon 'The Uncanny', artist Mike Kelley explores childhood toys and the effect which they can have, citing Freud's theory of the sensation of the uncanny. Kelley claims the uncanny to be linked with the 'art' experience; an interaction with an object which is then 'tied to the act of remembering... something long known to us, once very familiar', which I feel is key to the work above. Showing a snapshot of my partner, the unclarity of the image both immortalises and destroys the photograph at the same time. Playing upon the idea of an image or experience being "ingrained", both as fixed in memory and embedded within the fabric, this work questions the value & reliability of memories, relationships and the effects of these upon our being.
Mike Kelley is exhibiting at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art until the 15th January 2012.
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