The Blind Spot of an Old Dream
The title of this installation is taken from a Luce Iragaray paper. She was aFrench psycho analyst who looked at the misogyny and neglected areas in Freuds concepts relating to femaleness and female sexuality. The amazing large space at the teaching gallery gave me the opportunity to make a mural where I took elements from the undersea Girls at the End of The World wallpaper, blew them up and enhanced them. I chose to paint them directly onto paper with oil paint. This isn’t archival but I wanted an immediacy of brushwork that took a lot of trial and error. The work in the upstairs of the gallery shows the political and visual lead in to the installation downstairs. I liked the idea of a strange kind of bedroom with feminist and global warming themed elements. Around the mirrors (with your face reflected in them) are endangered species. Look on the wall and there is toile style wallpaper with scenes of the end of the anthropocene and a fantasy of a new era. In the corner is a screen with allegorical scenes after Fragonard featuring young people ignoring the obvious. I want to explore these issues visually in as many ways as I am capable of.