While working upon my current pieces, I came across 'Let Me Tell You', right, in the Eldon Square Shopping Centre, Newcastle. The piece, created by the Northern Engagement into Recovery from Addiction Foundation (NERAF) aims to present various stories surrounding 'the good and bad days' of caring for someone recovering from addiction. I was instantly reminded here of the 1995 films 'How to Make an American Quilt' - working on her master's thesis and unsure of her recent engagement, 26 year old Finn decides to spend the summer with her grandmother and great aunt, where she meets a quilting bee of local women working upon a quilt for her wedding, and, in joining them, hears tales of romance and sorrow, as they 'question of whether monogamous life long marriage is a realistic goal'. As suggested by Sally J. Scholz, 'society perpetuates itself through the rituals and signs that constitute the 'symbolic order'', and these are learned through language; she highlights the phallocentric nature of our use of language, offering examples of marital titles, and customarily patronymic family names. As such quilts were a common wedding gift, often utilising sentimental fabrics from memorable events in the lives of the makers, I felt a female craft so strongly linked with the traditionally phallogocentric ritual of marriage could both compliment and contradict the contemporary dating adverts, while the use of bedding was loaded in itself with suggestions - as claimed in Shakespeare's Othello, females are 'players in [their] housewifery, and housewives in [their] bed' - ultimately, women only go to "work" when then go to bed, suggesting a sense only of sexual worth. This "housewife-whore" opposition references a view of women only in terms of satisfying male desire, and an 'active/male and passive/female’ position - even through language, women are still considered in relation to the way they are "seen". As considered by Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune in their text 'Reclaiming the F Word; The New Feminist Movement', 'a girl can't win. If she doesn't portray herself as 'sexy' and desirable, she's called frigid. Yet if she's sexually active, she's a slut... women learned to see themselves as sexual objects, not subjects'. Developing from my earlier attempts, I began drawing upon adverts both looking for partners, and those advertising the sexual services of women. Taking these phrases out of context, and with no representation of the speaker, it is never made explicit as to the sex or gender of either speaker or reader.
'Untitled' (2012) embroidery on appropriated textiles
'Untitled' (2012) embroidery on appropriated textiles
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