EYE OBJECT

Barbie's Queer Accessories

I was incredibly excited to view the retrospective of the late Lucian Freud at the National Portrait Gallery this week. Freud's scrutinising study of the body and human form has always been of strong influence to me and my work. Throughout the exhibition, I was incredibly curious as to the frequent use of animals in his portraits, almost as if to draw some kind of parallel; in his 'Naked Man With Rat' (1977-8), the tail of the rat in the right hand of the male sitter hangs close to his penis, suggesting perhaps that they are both simply a type of appendage. It is hinted here that 'Freud did not care about gender or ego; people were simply another species of animal' (National Portrait Gallery, 2012). These ideas led me to consider the importance of such biological and physical features such as genitalia in creating identity. Wanting to develop my earlier experimentation into the manipulation of the doll's body, I moulded my sculpted penis onto the body of the Barbie whose arms created the appendage. The use of paper mache, for me reminiscent of childhood crafts and television shows such as 'Art Attack', is highlighted by the use of metallic silver spray, heightening the awareness of texture, material and process. Inspired by the fragmented and distorted dolls of Hans Bellmer, I wanted to move away from the human like quality of the doll and create something separate, and almost alien. Here, the almost absurd sight of such a recognised cultural item with a penis forces us to question why we are willing to accept that this inanimate figure is female, despite her lack of vagina, hormones and reproductive system.

'Barbie's Queer Accessories' and details (2012) Barbie doll, paper mache, spray paint

Lynda Benglis

In Lynda Benglis' latest exhibition at the Thomas Dane gallery - her first UK retrospective - the artist employs a variety of media (wax, rubber, clay, bronze and glitter to name a few) to create forms as extensions of the body. I personally found the pieces shown across the gallery's two spaces to display a consideration of material process, managing to marry organic forms in a very unnatural way. Her works almost blur the line between painting and sculpture vividly coloured latex seems to ooze across the floor, while works such as her 'Sparkle Knot IV', right, appeared to me at initial glance to be constructed from torn and knotted canvas.

Entering the second gallery space, we are greeted with Benglis' video work 'Female Sensibility' (1973), below left, which shows the artist and a friend gently kissing. Through their knowledge of the camera, and hence the viewer, and sense of very controlled and constructed gestures, the women here elevate themselves above the status of objects, and as such perhaps escape the tyranny of the male gaze. Set to the soundtrack of an appropriated American radio station, punctuated by country music tracks, as described Aesthetica magazine, it is 'uncomfortably stereotypical in its

masculinity, made worse by the later introduction of a preacher sermonising on the creation of Adam and Eve.'

The press release claimed "Her defiant nature was exemplified by a mythical advertisement in the November 1974’s edition of ArtForum, in which she posed naked brandishing a dildo – satirising the machismo of the art world." In an interview concerning this collection, the artist herself claimed she was interested in showing 'that an artist can be both masculine and feminine. But most importantly, an artist is an artist.'For me, this work attempts to display masculinity and femininity simultaneously, perhaps displaying visually both having the phallus in a physical sense of the signifier, and being the phallus, through the female form of her exposed breasts and hips. Continuing my exploration into childhood toys, I recreated the pose of the photograph below, using my manipulated "drag king" Barbie as my "penis" (I was, coincidently, wearing an almost identical shirt); this experimentation allow me to begin to consider the function of the Barbie in a child's development of a sense of self. Which the little girl can identify with this image outside of herself, it is precisely this outside otherness which presents the child with a sense of the female body as object.Through editing, I was able to heighten the lighting and contrast to remove my face, adding a far more ambiguous quality, and I found it gave more clarity to my previous ideas.

Developing from this initial concept, Inspired by the surrealist works of Hans Bellmer and his search for the missing female phallus through drawings such as 'L'Aigle Mademoiselle', in which the girl's "penis" is made visible, I created the collages below. Taking images from a section of a local newspaper, I created the collages below, taking inspiration from the gender splicing of Hannah Höch's photomontages. While I do not feel these works to be particularly successful, they do open up areas for further contemplation and manipulation; I am particularly interested in Barbie's lack of genitalia, its penis like shape, and the acceptance of her as a "woman" despite this biological lack.

GemmaGem

My partner was lucky enough to visit London during the opening weekend of Yayoi Kusama's latest exhibition at the Tate Modern; while he was a big fan of the artist's work, I was new to her polka-dot covered world. For me, Kusama's works employ an obsessive degree of repetition to create works which completely consume a space, and generate claustrophobic and disorientating situations for her audience. Ranging from her early watercolours and , to 'accumulation sculptures', left, and encapsulating installations such as her fluorescent polka dot adorned room 'I'm Here, but Nothing', the. I personally found the most captivating works to be those from the 'Sex Obsession' series, in which domestic objects are 'phallus-covered'. The titles however, may have been what interested me most; names such as 'Phallus Dress' (1961) refer to the penis-like fabric shapes encrusted onto the garment, however suggest the symbolic relation to the system of power which the penis signals. I began to consider whether it would be possible to attach these penis-like form to any object in an attempt to transfer the power it represents.

Continuing my exploration into the manipulation of appropriated objects, I combined the arms of a Barbie to create the penis below. Playing upon the idea of Eve having been created from Adam's rib, similar to Duchamp 'Objet-dard', I found it particularly intriguing to consider how this "female" yet genital free doll and be reconstructed to create this gender - and power - signifying "accessory".

David Shrigley and Drag King Barbie

David Shrigley's latest exhibit 'Brain Activity' showcases his work in a variety of media, extending from his best known drawings to sculpture, photography, painting and animation. After a tutorial just the day before, in which my work was described as having a playfulness despite its perhaps serious subject matter, I was excited to see the different ways Shrigley approaches this within his practice. Wit and humour are certainly huge aspects of his work - the usual hushed silence of the gallery space was frequently punctuated by laughs from fellow viewers - combined with observations upon everyday life and an ability to create a sense of playfulness around otherwise tense situations and objects. Presenting often the more sombre aspects of reality, deciding whether or not to laugh at works such as 'I'm Dead', right, is something the artist terms a ‘moral conundrum'.

Inspired by Shrigley's dry wit and "tongue in cheek" approach to his work, I began to consider ways to explore the absurdity of what society considers integral to traditional gender roles. It was as I began to consider the themes of "play" (clearly linked with childhood), that I came across BBC’s ‘Imagine: Art Is Child’s Play’, which included interviews with artists such as Grayson Perry, whose work explores and questions childhood experiences. Perry's transvestite alter ego Claire is a frequent motif throughout his work, and to me suggests the experience of 'dressing up' as a child taken to a new platform as an adult. As suggested by Butler, 'in imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative nature of gender itself' (1990). Through their work photographers such a Del LaGrace Volcano and performance artists like Julius Kaiser, left, explore and exploit the culture of 'Drag Kings' - women who adopt the dress and mannerisms of traditional masculinity, typically for performance. Through highlighting the the performative nature of gender, these artists perhaps suggest the possibility to "act" gender, and suggest the analogy of a play, in which ‘the script’ is determined within the normative, regulatory frame, with the subject offered limited ‘costumes’ to make a constrained choice of gender (Salih, 2002). After a returning home and finding some old Barbie dolls, I started to think about their lacking genitalia - surely if they have no sex, their "gender" is as yet undetermined. Expanding upon my initial research into the photographic works of Laurie Simmons, I began to experiment with the "Drag King" Barbie below. As a child, my grandmother and I would make clothes for my dolls out of pillowcases, and I feel this can be seen in the DIY approach to "her" handmade chequered shirt - perhaps suggestive of a traditional masculine career such as a Lumberjack. In the words of Volcano 'I believe in crossing the line as many times as it takes to build a bridge we can all walk across', and perhaps it is by blurring gender boundaries and adopting the "costume" of the other sex that we come closer to a more fluid and malleable sense of gender identity.

Parody and Drag and details (2012) Barbie doll, appropriated textiles