Hello my muddy friends, thankfully it has cooled down enough that I needed to put socks on to ward off the early morning chill. I am a Tasmanian woman and I do not like the heat, I do not like how it makes everything clay related tricksy and more difficult than it should be. The heat distracts me and on hot days I am never fully present in the moment, I spend half my time watching for smoke on the horizon and the other half of the time my eyes are peeled for snakes looking for water.
The heat also mucks up my plans for world domination. On Tuesday it was 36 degrees up here at 11am and so Molly and I decided to postpone her mentoring session until next week.
I have been sidetracked by tampons this week mudslingers. I wrote about my mind shift from seeing the simple tampon as nothing more than an innocent bundle of cotton rolling about in the bottom of my handbag to a powerful symbol of freedom. My words are here, in an article titled “Stop The Tampons” if you want to read the full story.
The guts of the matter is that refugee women and girls do not have easy access to sanitary products. Destroy the Joint organised a protest asking women to send protest tampons to the minister for immigration, Scott Morrison
Morrison responded by publicly telling us women how very silly we were, and assuring us that the women and girls who are currently locked up in horrible conditions, have all the tampons they will ever need. He patted us on our little heads and told us to not bother the men while they were working out even more cruel ways to punish refugees. It has something to do with big boats and tow ropes and guns and faulty GPS, I think.
I do not like being patted on the head and so I made 50 ceramic protest tampons.
So here I am fellow mudworkers, sitting here at my computer talking about clay tampons. These are made from Southern Ice porcelain, so when they are fired they will be blindingly white. I have a very bright red underglaze and I am going to write on the tampons.
Hope. Integrity. Freedom. Decency. Asylum. Compassion.
And any other word that comes to mind.
The tampons are the sum of my weeks work and when I haven’t been thinking about human rights abuses I have been rescuing heat struck beetles and feeding them strawberries.
That was my week in clay.
How was yours?
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I had no idea beetles like strawberries and knowing that now still doesn’t explain why I find these little critters inside my house where there are clearly no strawberries. I shoo the little buggers out onto the lawn several times per summer.
I didn’t know they liked strawberries either River. I just happened to be eating one when I saw the beetle so I bit her off a piece and tadaa happy beetle
Love your tampon tirade.
And the kindness to beetles.
Hugs.
Thank you 🙂
Beetles are one thing I didn’t consider when the ripe strawberries on my sole strawberry plant kept “mysteriously” disappearing… Hmmm…
Lovely act of kindness from you. 🙂
Slater beetles eat my strawbs in the garden as do some birds. and thank you Cassandra 🙂
what will you do with your porcelain tampons when they are fired?
Great photo of the beetle and I would not have guessed they liked to eat strawberries..
I am going to make a barbed wire bowl or if the BW bowl is too tricksy and stabby to make I will make a ceramic bowl and attach some barbed wire to it and then I will either ask my gallery (Penny Contemporary) for some space in the window. Or I might approach Amnesty or the Green shop or somebody similar and see if they want to give me some window space. Or I will just do a SM blitz and exhibit virtually on twitter and then give the tampons to Destroy the Joint. The possibilities are endless Anna 🙂
hope the gallery makes the space for you… of course the other possibilities sound good too..
Couldn’t sleep so I am writing.
I Really like your beetle photos. If one, was to abstract them ,they would translated and be very powerful paintings or drawings akin to Mark Rothko ‘s moody, colour fields, or some of Robert Motherwell’s works on paper, or paintings like, his Elegies to the Spanish Republic.
That’s what came to my mind, on looking at them.
I also like them just the way they are. Delightful that one can feed insects with strawberries, that are weather affected.
It is mind blowing in so many ways, delightful and almost brings to mind an inspiring concept for a children’s fairy tale for raising environmental consciousness
Because Greg Morrison took exception to actual tampons, maybe …….. another set of wicked ideas, sprang into my mind,
unfortunately, I rather suspect, Greggy-boy is rather uneducated, probably ignorant about the arts, so it would be wasted on him.
My mind was toying with ideas and extrapolating a daydream fantasy…….. I kinda went into a mind- fest – *smiling*
(your fault , of course)
……….
and this is where my mind drifted and I HOPE I am not ‘out of line ‘- with this imaginary little film that flitted across my brain.
The conversation between you and me went this way:
Krista: Kim, Were you contemplating sending your 50 porcelain tampons with their red words, apt words, to Greg Morrison as a Memorial Art Piece?
Kim: Haven’t got that far, I ‘m just, still caught up in conceiving and deciding the conceptual texts that will carry my message and my feelings about this whole affair, and the asylum woman’s feelings, and how it would be to stand in their shoes, in this shocking situation.
Krista: Do you mind if I play the devil’s advocate?
The intention would be :
(Inventing a playful, yet serious dialogue, with the text and tampon forms)
“A contemplative game suitable for a lacking compassionate, and backbone, polititian”.
Krista: About this idea of presenting Greg Morrison an appropriate art work? I thought doing so, would be a way, in which, to bring home to him, how really shocking, this preventable situation really is. and to help him ponder over his policies and paternalistic attitudes .
To guide and help him you could provide him with instructions on how to interact with the art work …….
that is, the many ways these pieces could be assembled, for instance, one example, assemble tampon unit, into units of 4, horizontally or vertically, writing side up, on a rectangular tray,( the tray represents ‘presentation’ angle but also is a convenient way of housing the pieces and also provides a ‘playground’ to interact with the pieces) assembling the pieces could conceivably lead the player in making a composition something like a Klee colour / shape painting, or a Rosalie Gascoigne assemblage.
She is a strong conceptual artistic female voice she may provide inspiration.
When you Google her on the images page a there comes up a pretty comprehensive array of her assemblages.
eg., “The Entropic Environment” which in spirit relates really well to asylum seekers ( metaphysically) and I personally think you would love this work conceptually.
( Rosalie Gascoigne -Untitled (12 squares of 6), 1980-81
sawn weathered wood90 × 119.5cm) or Downbeat, 1997 retro-reflective road signs on wood 122.0 x 79.0 cm
signed, dated and inscribed verso:Rosalie Gascoigne / 1997 / DOWNBEAT- which by the way – Sold for $258,000 (inc. BP) in Auction 16 – 1 September 2010, Sydney.
or ( link) – http://annettelarkin.com/art-detail.asp?
(link) – Piece to Walk Around, 1981 saffron thistle sticks 20 squares 80 x 80 cm each
(Detail) idImage=52908http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/15/Rosalie_Gascoigne/80/26426/
In the link – little dolls that look like very old fashioned, clothes pegs, assembled into little boxes displayed on a vertical shelf, the shelf is made up from what looks to be fence palings. The small compartmentalised boxes look like they are made from the same wood
(link) – http://www.mca.com.au/collection/work/20117/http://nevolution.typepad.com/.a/6a00e39335dc1e883401127980f6a228a4-pi
Multiple versions of interacting with the pieces or multiple series of art works from the pieces.
Conversely another version all that ,and make it as a wearable art form to be worn as an emblem, pendant (like mayors wear) to be worn when making decisions about asylum seekers.
Ran out of steam,
I enjoyed playing with this – I hope you enjoy it as well.
cheers Krista
So MUCH food for thought. Thank you Krista. 🙂
Hi – sorry, I do get carried away, and sometimes overwhelm – not my intention – not sleeping, and need to occupy my brain until it tires out-
It was a bit like being rhetorical and not, at the same time;
and I do support you, and your endeavour.
and most importantly, it is your work.
Meaningful, personal and communicating at a deep level, politically.
Artist – art work- Audience, a part of the Conceptual Framework
I am audience, captured *imaginatively* by your artwork.
My imagination was captured by the strength of your passion about this situation. It is infectious.
You have given me food for thought as well.
Your photography in this piece, and in other blog entries has moved me, in a poetic way, I think you also speak with your camera.
I enjoy Art History and seeing connections between art works and between artists.
You can imagine how they had to pare back my Diploma Proposal as I presented at least 10 lifetimes worth of work, totally impossible and unfeasible. and unrealistic.
I did enjoy creating this as a fantasy piece of writing, but also as a dialogue between me, you and your work.
The four artists which I chose, is what sprung to mind, as I was reading your blog, and that is what I wanted to share with you.
I want to know what happens next and if you get to present your work in some of the places that you are thinking of.
I have gone back to drawing and possibly printmaking, there is a theme brewing for me there. Can’t make ceramics presently, but I feel passionate about it, and connected to it, I still keep up, keenly, my interest in it viewing it, following it and seeing what I can in galleries, browsing, ceramic artists, reading etc
Writing is an new thing for me as well.
I like the fact that you document your work, via photographs, this gives it an extra dimension, as the ephemeral part of the process of your ‘oeuvre’
It is like the beginning of spring and a new lease of art life for you with this project.
Cheers,
Krista
Krista I value and enjoy your comments. I have a terrible time remembering artist names as well as authors and so I enjoy it very much when people mention an artist in reference to my work because then when I have a quick google it is either a “Oh I remember them” or a “ooh mark this down for further research” A friend mentioned Clarice Becket in relation to some of my photography and I then fell in love with her work. I am so easily distracted and I find it difficult to hold in some knowledge (like names) that I would use your comment as a reference point later on (as long as I didn’t forget it was there) So please don’t apologise and please continue to have fun in my comments 🙂
Artistic Kinship and fun.
I like that.
And my links don’t work, probably because I, Apple pulled, the address off the menu bar. Clarice Beckett’s work is a favourite of mine too. She stuck to her guns, and now that you mention her, a good reference for those dreamy, soft focus, flower photographs.
Cheers
Such a small thing providing a gateway to such a large problem.
Everyday people can not relate to being locked up or to fleeing from persecution and this lack of empathy is heightened by our Governments appalling propaganda and use of inflammatory language such as illegal and queue jumpers. By painting the refugees as illegal and implying that we the general populace need to be protected from them makes it easy for the govt to get away with criminal mistreatment of vulnerable people. It is shameful smartcat so very wrong and shameful. Highlighting the issue that refugee women and girls do not have easy access to sanitary products gives ordinary women a point of empathy and to my mind that is why the tampons are a powerful protest tool. 🙂