The key thing that I hope to communicate is a sense of artificiality. There is something not quite right in all of my images; the notion that the woman in the painting is not who she appears to be. Venus dressed as a pin up; the high classical ideal of woman meets the war time poster girl. In reality, both ideas are not so dissimilar. When these images were first produced by artists they were for men only, they were intended to be erotic. Not so different from the images which adorn the inside of men’s lockers.
The work goes a little deeper than that. The idea of a woman presented in an artificial way is not limited to the world of visual art but is a common theme in western culture more generally. Everyday, women are presented with an image of what “femininity” looks like, and more specifically, what desirable femininity should look like. As a result, most women strive to achieve this idealism, dressing up, ‘masquerading’ as the ideal in order to fit the idea of the ‘phallic’ female.
Gender is a performance and is not limited to the role of the female. Men too must perform in a particular way in order to fit in with phallic law. In order for heterosexual people to desire each other and for their relationships to work, psychoanalytically, both must perform their role in the correct way. As a result, we see macho imagery of men, muscular and in clear possession of the mythical phallus. In order to confirm the female role of the ‘other’, that without the phallus, the female has a particular set of codes to follow to ‘be’ the phallus. Both therefore fit together, both being and having. One confirms the other.
By presenting an image of a woman who is trying very hard to follow all of the codes simultaneously and by not quite achieving the ideal; I present an image of artificiality and hopelessness but with an element of humour. While not taking itself too seriously, my work addresses issues which are current to ‘gendered subjects’ throughout the western world.