‘I’m interested in the idea that the man’s fascination with the image of the woman remains fundamentally an enigma to the man himself.’ Victor Burgin.
Installation Images
Artist Statement – Best in Show, Wellington, 2006.
Investigating how women are being created for consumption I found representations of women in cyberspace. After several experiments on the construction of beauty, my fascination turned to the individual parts of the female body that have been enlarged, elongated or shrunken to create these ideal bodes in the virtual world.
What does a “normal” woman look like? How do they compare? The result is a projected video work of female bodies created from separately filmed sections of the body edited together. Each part moves separately from the whole and was filmed at different angles, the result creates a distorted body that appears quite different from each of the others. Each body filmed on different days and different cameras results in different skin colourings and white balances.
Headless to allow for the viewer to gaze at the bodies freely, but groin-less to interrupt what they actually came to see. Although the bodes looked different from one another the realisation that actually they were all of the same body has an uncanny effect.
The strength of the work is in the different readings and discussions around it. The humorous “hobbit feet” allow people into the work that for some then becomes a serious feminist work. Fairground distorting fun mirrors become police, prison or concentration camp line-ups. Confusion on how many models were used becomes self-portraiture for others.
List of Works
Untitled (Unnamed) video installation, varying size, 2006 – using three projectors.
Untitled (Rose Construction), video, 3.44 min, 2006