CLAIMING COLLABORATING EXHIBITING EXPERIMENTING TRANSITIONAL OBJECTS PSYCHOANALYSIS PRECONCEPTION GENDER FETISH PLAY PERFORMATIVE
Janus Dolls
I made these dolls after researching at The V and A at Bethnal Green as a site specific work for the exhibition at Kentish Town Health Centre. During the period of making the dolls my research and thinking was focussing on the relationship between a person and an object which had been given human form. Researching the origins of that relationship took me to Donald Winnicott and his observations of the
When setting up the exhibition, there was considerable positive interest in the dolls, especially from women who wanted to cuddle them.. But when installed there were two complaints about the positioning of the dolls and I was asked to write an explanatory piece: this follows The dolls were moved to a new position in a different stairwell and the response was that people either loved or hated them.
Janus was the Roman god of transitions, doorways and passages, peace and conflict. He had two faces, one looking forwards to the future and one looking back to the past. The doll may also be a transitional object.
Children, and adults, may show one emotion when feeling another. My two faced dolls are made from naturally coloured wax from Madame Tussauds, calico and toy stuffing and made to a design by the Victorian doll maker, Lucy Peck (two faced or exchangeable head dolls were relatively common then). The expressions are different for the boy and the girl. I have chosen to express the boy showing an angry face to the world and a sad face to the stairway to the Children’s Therapy Unit. The girl is showing a sad face to the outside and an angry face to the inside. The dolls are positioned so that they can be seen from the reception area and at child height through the window on the stairway.
I started a Foundation course in Art and Design in 1969, dropped out and into a career in Nursing, Midwifery, Health Visiting and Teaching. I lived and worked in Tower Hamlets for many years and moved to Hereford to grow a family. I have two children, a girl and a boy and a grand daughter. I completed my BA in Fine Art in 2012.
I Knew Who I Was
A group exhibition at The Freespace Gallery, Kentish Town Health Centre
Curated by Melissa Hardwick and a team from MFA
Organised by Liz Morison and Melissa Hardwick.
January 25 – March 18, 2016
Professional Development
I organised this exhibition after meeting Melissa, the Freespace curator, at a friend’s exhibition there in 2014. Over a number of months I negotiated dates and organised a team of peers on the course to help with assisting Mel in publicising and curating the exhibition. Nearly all members of our course took advantage of this opportunity to provide a site responsive artwork in a large, free gallery space with a high footfall. The exhibition was not invigilated and was curated over the large purpose built Health Centre as well as in the Gallery Space, with full access by the centre staff and patients. Over the eight weeks of the exhibition there was some rearranging and damage to work as decorators (without the knowledge of the curator) had been booked to paint the internal walls. One of my dolls was broken when taken down without supervision by the private building management team. I took advice from tutors and peers (I am a member of a-n) then I invoiced for repairs and remade the doll within a week. Some small pieces of work went missing and others had positions changed by cleaners or because of Health and Safety. Melissa was supportive throughout this time, we were the largest group she had ever curated and we had unwittingly exposed the difficulties of working in a large privately owned building rented by a public service.
A very well attended private view and a lot of feedback about the work has been useful for everyone, including a lot of learning about exhibiting outside a ‘white cube’ gallery.
Keywords. Negotiating.Networking.Organising. Event management, Flexibility
