Fulya Çetin / Anna Puhakka / Amanda Spawforth / Miranda Whall / Sarah Kate Wilson / Dawn Woolley / Wen Wu
All Your Women Things is PAPER’s second exhibition. The exhibition focuses upon a group of female artists whose work subverts items stereotypically associated with the feminine, they manipulate items as diverse as stockings, furs, corsets, make-up, and sex toys; recasting them to parody their ‘female’ associations.
The Istanbul based artist, Fulya Çetin, presents a group of portraits draped in furs. Çetin’s portraits fix the sitter in time, a frozen moment of life, yet the furs they wear present a life fixed in death. This is juxtaposed with other works in the series of tender portrayals of animal companionship. Dawn Woolley presents the darker side of objectifying women. In her photographs she creates photographic cut-outs which she places back in the landscape before re-photographing them in situ. Interloper presents stockinged legs, coquettishly poised in the first image then later discarded in an urban park, a tableaux suggesting the concerns of being a female in contemporary society. In Amanda Spawforth’s pencil crayon drawings, the artist presents herself in a variety of stereotypical feminine roles. Her work All Women are Bad, transforms Spawforth in a Burlesque performer, dressed in stockings and corset, the epitome of sexual desire. Spawforth attempts to reclaim her right as a female artist to present herself sexualised before the viewers gaze. Whereas Amanda Spawforth seeks the viewer’s gaze, Anna Puhakka confronts the viewer. Dressed in elaborate costumes and make-up, her disturbing self-portraits seek both to revile, yet draw in a viewer through her sumptuous imagery.
Sarah Kate Wilson picks upon the detritus of the everyday. Employing found imagery, glitter, pens, pastels; she reassembles this paraphernalia into chaotic collages. Also reusing the found object, Wen Wu paints on top of prints of old master paintings. Often presenting these images upside down, she juxtaposes a sexualised female nude, revealing elements of the masterwork through her transparent form. In other works the female is birthing a renaissance saint from between her parted legs. Similarly Miranda Whall creates a juxtaposition of female genitalia, sex toys, and songbirds. At first glance we are drawn to the image through their meticulous detail, focussing upon a bird perching upon a sex toy. The work suggests the naturalness of the sexual act through the ambivalence to sex by the animals that surround us.
All Your Women Things presents the diverse range of artists represented by PAPER augmented by new editions specifically for this exhibition. The exhibition allows viewers to see how a group of works can be thematically hung within a domestic space to create a relationship emphasising the concepts behind each artists work.