On location at Newport Lakes Park, Newport.
Ilona Nelson at he conclusion of her performance piece.
When I was in high school our 'career councillor' gave us stickers that said "Boronia High School girls can do anything". I was in year ten and it was a time when girls were being encouraged to consider careers in the male dominated trades and continue to study the less popular subjects like science and maths. Of course I chose none of the above, but it was the beginning of a new attitude towards women and careers. What the governments, schools and career councillors failed to impart on us however, was that girls can not do everything.
Speculating from my own view point, I wonder whether this push to place more women on career paths within the workforce resulted in many of us not conceiving until much later in our lives while we pursued progress and promotions. Then we did marry and had families and returned to work as soon as we possibly could, because hey fellas, us girls can do not only anything, but everything. Which may be the case for the first years of your child, but eventually the dream of being Wonder Woman Super Mum would hit the invisible wall. Suddenly, for the first time, compromise and concession lead to confusion about identity and idealism. Suddenly those bawdy broads who could do anything were thrust back in to their tradition roles of being mother and wife, the very kryptonite we had all been desperate to avoid.
Which brings me to Newport Lakes Park last week. My daughter and I participated in a performance piece by local artist Ilona Nelson for her upcoming exhibition 'This Place'. Ilona's work explores the very reality that most mothers, and artists in particular, encounter when a child's survival depends on you and your art studio is left for the spiders to make cobwebs in. For the performance piece we were asked to wear silky dressing gowns, reminiscent of the 1950s, and adorn her in items such as texta colour, water, sand, oats feathers, stickers and my daughters favourite, tinned spaghetti which Ella delicately painted over Ilonas arms.
The performance concluded with Ilona collapsing into the grass. For me, this performance was about the burden of motherhood and all of those surprisingly light and unexpected items that piled upon you only weigh you down. My daughter, who is now eight, kept asking questions as to why we were wearing these gowns and what we were doing. Trying to explain to an eight year old why I would rather be painting than looking after her is not an easy thing, and inevitably leads to the other culprit I have not discussed with you today, guilt.
"This Place aims to break the barriers of the white cube, create interactive art in a family friendly space and, perhaps most importantly, prompt honest conversations about the complexities of parenthood". Art Almanac Dec/Jan 2014-15.
'This Place' is showing at Town Hall Gallery in Hawthorn from January 10 to February 22.
No comments:
Post a Comment