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