Research and Critical Reflection
Critical Reflection: Sound, connection, collaboration and the female body. The female body as an object or a voice for social change?
Introduction and Position
I am cis-gendered white woman. That is my position in the world and the narrative my work has largely reflected. My recent collaborative works have been working with women from a diverse range of cultural backgrounds and with different and similar experience to my own. I feel this is significant to acknowledge as I do not intend to tell their stories for them or control their voice. But instead work collaboratively with these women and their different experiences yet still connect to the wider female experience.
My practice is ethical in the depiction of who I represent, allowing the person I work with to be involved with the process. Reflective of the initial conversation we exchanged when we started working together and reflective of the female experience. An experience which is often over-looked or side-lined in the mainstream, which has wider social implications. I look to explore and re-address this gender imbalance and open a space and dialogue with the women I work with, in the form of pictorial imagery and sound works/podcasts.
The context of the work has been framed by the medical world. This came about from my collaboration with SURGE and a desire to work with women who also explore the body, albeit in a medical environment.
The MA summer show was significant as it highlighted how I had found my methodology within the work. However, the content represented in the white gallery space hung together quite randomly. This show didn’t feel like it had a cohesive connecting context. Except for the fact I was painting women; I called this body of work ‘Alive and From the Archive’. As you can see illustrated by my painting of Ramah and Claudia Jones, I was excited by the process of egg tempera, in combination with mural and fragmentation the pictorial frame within a space. However, there is very little connecting these two women apart their love of art.
Feeling Fruity Feelings, Fall and Flow. Egg Tempera on Board and Watercolour on Wall, 70x90cm, 2023.
Royal Blue Whispers. Egg Tempera on Board, 25x60cm, 2023.
Moving forward from the MA summer show I wanted to create different strands and a clear cohesive connecting element within the practice. This can be seen though my two more recent projects, SURGE III and Women of the NHS.
On SURGE III
I have been collaborating with Dr Robert M Stafford-Williams, a medical engineering researcher in the MISI group at University College London. Robert uses ultrasound waves to explore the “imaging paradigm that utilises optical fibres to emit and receive ultra-sound”. (Stafford-Williams, M, R) Essentially, he is using small fiber-optics and ultrasound waves to image the heart and lungs to explore heart damage and lung cancer. We were paired together at a bizarre speed dating event with 3 researcher and 15 artists. It felt like the hunger games. Each artist trying to win favour with a researcher so they would be picked to win the bid.
The aim of SURGE III is to bring together scientists, artists, and the public to explore the complexities of healthcare technology. (Post-Grad Community, 2023) With the intention that the process of the project is more significant than the result. This notion was parroted by Curator and Youth Programmer Renee Odjidja in a lecture ‘On working with communities/workshops/performance/audiences. Odijdia explained that art can be invisible and doesn’t need to be a tangible object. Instead, it can be connections, community, moments or creations you make can disappear and that’s ok. This notion of process of activity and working with a community being the art has been transformative in my thinking and engagement with SURGE III as a project and avenue for making.
SURGE III Commissions poster
Once paired together Robert and I spoke about why we were interested in SURGE and within a wider context what’s important to us about medical care. Our connection came though issues concerning women and ethnic minorities and the implications race and gender has on the type of treatment and care you will receive. Robert described ‘Being from uh, you know non white majority background myself…. There are certain things you hear about the treatment…. that differ from what you get if you were sort of typical English person going in’. A harrowing example of this can be seen though the example below. ‘Maternal Mortality for Black women is currently almost four times higher than for White Women’ (Women and Equalities Committee, 2023). As published by the UK Parliament, in a house of commons committee report. Disparities in health care for people of colour and women can be seen across the board, from women not being believed for pain, symptoms not being recognised, and research not being invested in because it’s for a women’s or trans people’s body. (Bigg, M, P32)
Our collaborative purpose is to explore and connect medical research with the people affected while gaining an understanding of their lived experiences. With the aim of exploring how to make sure procedures of the future can be as positive an experience as possible. We aim to humanize their experiences and create a space where an open dialogue can be shared. I have been exploring medical texts where doctors reflect on their personal experiences within the health care. I have investigated how to ethically and sensitively approach working with other people’s medical experiences.
In reading Dr. Phil Whitaker: What is a Doctor, I was shocked at the stark honesty of this book, and the detailed descriptions given by Dr Whitaker of his patients ‘Simon was lying on the sofa, still in his dressing gown, stubble on his face, his long grey hair gathered in a ponytail.’ (Whitaker, P. P24) Multiple real people have been merged, creating a fiction narrative, this provides the reader with detailed personal accounts, which respectfully anonymise the person involved. This a starkly different technique in compassion to Adam Kay in his book UNDOCTORED who instead anonymised the people by ‘replacing their names with members of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’. (Kay, A. Pvii) Within our SURGE III collaboration I plan to anonymise the participants by creating a silk sculpture, on a medical frame. I will overlap and collage their image with ultrasound wave paintings created by the people involved in the workshop.
Ultrasound wave imagery
Digital drawing, medical frame, silk fabric, 2023
Exploring Roberts Research led us to work different charities, to reflect the two strands of his research, lung cancer and heart disease. In response we will run two workshops, one with the British Heart Foundation and with ALK Positive. I choose to work with the charity ALK positive as this organisation works with a specific rare form of lung cancer that disproportionality affects women and people of Asian ethnicity. (ALK Positive Lung Cancer UK, 2023), We were unable to find a charity that specifically affected marginalized groups within heart disease, interestingly this is a feminist issue within itself. Heart Disease is considered a man’s disease, this has been informed by media, film and a lack of investment into exploring women’s heart conditions. Our imaginary picture of heart disease is not too dissimilar to our imaginary picture of a doctor, ‘commonplace picture of the person with a heart attack has been of a powerful and successful man in a stressful and high paying job.’ (Clarke J, 2010) The representation of heart disease or otherwise known as the ‘Hollywood heart attack’ (Sanford, F, 2023). results in women not knowing symptoms of heart disease and exaggerate other conditions being seen as more of a threat to women's health. For example, breast cancer is considered female and a bigger risk to our health in reality ‘more women die from heart attacks than breast cancer each year’ (Whitaker, P. P109). We watch medical television with typically male doctors performing lifesaving defibrillator onto a male patient. Culture informs our perception, and we are being drip fed by popular culture the message that women don’t have heart attacks only men do. ‘heart disease is currently the number one cause of motility for women in Europe and America’(Bigg. M, P149) I felt this notion was mirrored when I was looking for a heart disease charity that focused on women and ethnic minorities, as I was unsuccessful in finding one.
Working on this project with SURGE and Robert highlighted to me the importance for my practice to respond to and work within a specific context. Responding to a project in this way gives me a structure for my creative feminist position to navigate. I can respond to the framework and context laid out by the project, which when considering my outcome for the MA show, reflects the limitations I had reached.
On More Than a Body
‘I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it's shameful or immodest but because I don't want to see it. I don't want to look at something that determines me so completely.’ (Atwood, M. p12) Offred as she baths taken from the Handmaids Tail. Although this writing is considered speculative fiction (Armstrong, K, J, 2018) Offred summarises women’s role within society and despite this being a dystopian fiction I see and feel the commonalities with our society and the depiction and control of women bodies in representation, birth control and medical access. ‘Women are aware that every movement they make in public is supposed to have sexual content for the opposite sex’ (Lippard, L .P78)
When creating my painting of women, I have been exploring how I represent their body, playing with shape and form. This can be seen though my gestural painting directly on the wall with my painting of Ellie and my use of cropped fragmented picture plains within my painting of Dr. Bushera. Moving beyond the notion that these women are more than a body, there is more to them than just their physical form.This was my intention when playing with the structure of composition. Historically women’s bodies have been used by men as props, therefore when the women’s movement exploded into the art world, women started using their own bodies, and faces, this can be seen though the work of for example Yayoi Kusama and Carolee Schneemann. I am mindful that within the history of feminist art, there is a tradition of using your own body this has been argued for by Lucy R. Lippard ‘When a women uses their own bodies in their artwork, they are using their selves; a significant psychological factor converts these bodies or faces from object to subject’ (Lippard, L. p102) Does this mean, that by representing images of women who aren’t me, women of the NHS and women I know, I am in fact following the same rhetoric as men? Are my works subject or objects? I aspire for them to be subjects, similar to the works created by Phoebe Boswell.
Powerful Responsibility, Dining and Drinks. Egg Tempera on Board and Watercolour on the Wall, 70x60cm, 2023.
More women in the top positions -.Dr Bushera, Egg Tempera on board, 38x60cm, 2023
Artist Phoebe Boswell is an example of an artist who uses the bodies of others but doesn’t fall into the trap of objectification. Boswell is combining digital technology with traditional draftwomanship (Contemporary And, 2023). Her work explores an expanded notion of drawing, using animation, sound and installations within her practice. (Tiwani Contemporary, 2017 ) The exhibition For Every real World Spoken has been impactful on my practice as within this exhibition Boswell has created nude pencil portraits of women. Boswell has depicted her friends, colleagues, artists, and people from the art world. Within each portrait of these purposeful confrontational women a QR code has been drawn. The women are almost life-sized standing on a dark flat ground all with white background. This is mimicked in the gallery space, where the walls have been painted black at the bottom of the wall in line with the floor, then the white of the gallery wall matching the white of the paper. The result, the women feel alive in the room with you. Confronting you with their gaze, encouraging you to scan their QR code. The audience can then scan the code and be taken to an online link ‘revealing an article, image, thought, personal truth or observation directly chosen by the woman in the portrait. Each woman was also invited to choose the title of her portrait. Drawing on a lineage of black female literary and artistic ancestry’ (Contemporary And, 2017)
Phoebe Boswell 'Pieces of a (Wo)Man 2017 pencil on paper 150cm x 120cm
This methodology is one I have been emulating within my practice. On my Women of the NHS page, I create a platform for each person I work with. With the aim of re-navigating the role of the subject, to listen and actively hear their voice alongside the visual depiction. The role of the subject’s voice in the process of creation is significant for my practice and one I share with Boswell. Boswell’s work pushes against the rhetoric of ‘Men act and women appear…. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed is female. Thus, she turns herself into an object of vision: a sight.” (Berger, J. P47) As described by John Berger in Ways of Seeing. While Boswell’s women ‘are not passive models, but will confront the viewer, both with their bodies and their speech, as participants reclaiming their voice.’ (Tiwani Contemporary, 2017) Boswell has successfully though this exhibition re-addressed the objectified women. These works reference and nod to the historical representation of women in western art however reframed and present us with woman reclaiming their own voice and body, from a female centric perspective.
Artist Kiki Smith whose ideas explore the idea of the ‘exploited female body as a battle ground for social and political ideologies’ (Women Portraying Women, P81) Smith depicts women within society, exploring the body beyond the physical exterior, which historically male masters have predominantly focused on. Instead, Kiki explores ‘what is inside the body- what is exuded from it, leaks out of it, drips from the uterus or bladder is equally important’ (Nochlin, L. P298) Smith’s interest in the inner workings of the body, could come from her experience working as an emergency medical technician. Whatever the reason it has led Smith to represent the women she depicts as beyond the physical body as historically seen though the male gaze within art. Her women become living, breathing and excreting, they move out of the realm of idealised objectification and represent those taboo moments women experience.
When considering the representation of women’s bodies within art in comparison to women’s bodies within health care “male anatomy and physiology are often represented as the norm, with women being underrepresented in non‐reproductive anatomy. The impression is gained that the human body is male and that the female body is presented only to show how it differs.” (Kaminsky, L. 2018) Therefore historically women are represented as merely an idealised shell and object for male consumption, and not deemed interesting enough to explore in a medical context. ‘To reinhabit the empty body of female allegory, to reclaim its meaning on behalf of the female sex.’ (Betterton, R. P54)This is a stark contrast to the work of Kiki Smith who explores and shows us the inner workings of the female body. ‘The scientific gaze - like its aesthetic counterpart - is highly selective and is only as objective as the observer can be.’(Cronje, K. P4) Throughout medical history and artistic history the gaze has been male.
Pee Body, 1992. Wax and 23 strands of glass beads, 68.6 x 71.1 x 71.1 cm
On Process
While creating my egg tempera paintings, I observed that the mark making method at the start of the process, was like the method I employ when creating an etching. This was one of my justifications for exploring etching, I saw it as a method to navigate application of mark, and how I could transfer and translate it in my egg tempera paintings. Käthe Kollwitz, print working women with Blue Shawl, highlights this delicate mark making method to represent a portrait. Kollwitz’s, use of directional mark making, is a method I have emulated within my own printing and painting practice when creating and using cross-hatching, horizontal and vertical lines to represent light and shape. Kollwitz created a differing representation of women that moved away from the archetype image and instead represented the horrors of war from a female perspective, as well as the result war has on the female body reinforced by poverty. (Makufka, B. 2010) Her work demonstrates and highlights social injustice, in an emotive and powerful way, ‘Kollwitzs concern for women and their well-being remained constant throughout her life and work’(Phagan, P. P43 ). I find the method of cross-hatching and etching practically reflective when creating, this is because you are physically scratching into a surface to represent a face. The act in of itself feels violent and surgical.
Section of Dr Bushera, Egg Tempera,38x60cm, 2023
Dr Bushera, Etching Aquatint, 20x20cm 2023
Käthe Kollwitz, Working Woman with Blue Shawl (Brustbild Einer Arbeiterfrau Mit Blauem Tuch), 1903
The use of egg within the cannon of feminist art, has been a re-occurring visual theme for feminists. With notions surrounding the erotic, sexism, oppression, birth rights and liberation. (The Gourmand, 2022 P96) The egg has also been used as a metaphor for the female body itself. A considerable number of female bodies produce eggs and discharge them. This can be seen in the work of Marilyn Minter and her work Quail’s Eggs and Sarah Lucas Self Portrait with Fried Eggs. Minter’s work aims to provoke the viewer to engage with visual imagery surrounding the male gaze and the mass mainstream objectification of the female body. Often using food, as a method to create ‘sexually suggestive images of food preparation’ (Epps, P, 2016)
Sarah Lucas, Self Portrait with Fried Eggs, 1996
Marylin Minter, Quail’s Egg. 2004
These works like mine, represent the female body and use egg in the construction of the work. For Lucas this can be seen through her recent work ‘A Thousand Eggs: For Women’ where women were asked to throw eggs at the wall to create a painting made of bright yellow egg dripping down from the wall. (Russeth, A. 2018) This work connects women’s bodies to the biological female reductive cell, where the egg is put into the hands of the women “perhaps alluding to political debates concerning women’s rights over their own bodies”. (Russeth, A. 2018)) When considering this in the context of my own work, I like the connection and metaphor, how my works have been slowly layered up with egg to bind them to the surface of the gesso. Thus, the creation of the structure of the women I represent has a biological feeling to it, linking to the women in medicine I depict. I believe it is significant to acknowledge my use of the egg in the production of my image making. This method of using egg to make feminist art also situations me within this history. It fights against the notion that “Women are somehow more biological, more corporeal, and more natural than men” (Grosz, E P14)
Sarah Lucas, ‘A Thousand Eggs: For Women’, 2017
Lloyd summarises this moment of reflective connection in her essay ‘conversations like these’ ‘I need to gain their trust. I hope to gain it by being a thoughtful listener, and sharing, when I can and when it is appropriate, times in which something similar has happened to me or when I have felt similarly.’ (Lloyd, K) Lloyds, influence led me to create my own podcast series, interviewing women from a wildly different field to my own. Like Lloyd, the sound quality of my podcast’s varies as the location of recording changes from women to women whom I interview.
On Interviews Research methodologies and oral histories.
Exploding the work of Kelly Lloyd, a ‘transdisciplinary artist and educator who focuses on issues of representation and knowledge production and prioritizes public-facing collaborative research’ (Lloyd, K). Lloyd has been interviewing workers in the art world from 2017 and in 2021 Lloyd published her podcast ‘This Thing we Call Art’. This podcast has a real warmth and connection between Lloyd and her interviewees. When listening to these podcasts it feels like listening to honey. Some have been recorded in cafes or at the artist’s home or studio, so each podcast’s sound varies in quality. However, this homemade feel to the podcast gives the listener the feeling of intimacy and straining to hear an interesting conversation while out. The DIY nature producing podcasts in this way links back to a rich feminist history of video art. ‘The technology relatively affordable and handheld, became accessible to artists - works with the literal self-looking made by these technologies’ (Fournier. L ,2018 P59) This mode of practice is ‘specular and reflexive as it records’ (Fournier. L, 2018 P59) I see the methodology of the Podcast as the same as video art in its ability to create a connective, reflective, space. A space where a women’s lived experiences can be shared and creating a moment of jointing where our experiences are reflected at us though recording.
The interviews I have been conducting link back to Nell Dunn's 'Talking to Women,' I aim to create a platform that speaks to not only the collective experiences but also the individual issues these women face within their work. (Dunn, N) The notion of the ‘autobiographical and narrative modes … where in part inspired by women’s activities, especially conscious raising’ (Lippard, L. 1995, P100). The mode of Podcasting can emulate the feminist historical traction of conscious raising, they are modes of exploring feminist consciousness, in their method of questioning sexism, racism, experience at work and an individual and collective output.
To conclude this essay has highlighted how my practice has shifted and changed. At the start of the course, I was very much interested in representing the people around me. However, I have found I am most creative and experimental when I am working collaboratively with others. This can be seen though the collective Ramah and I created ‘Dirty Laundry’ and then also how my practice has enveloped in my more recent collaborations. As part of my practice, I have begun working on more targeted projects, for example my SURGE collaboration, and Women of the NHS. Which I have found have enabled me to focus my ideas and response in new and surprising ways. Helping me to develop a wider arrange of methodologies, though anchoring me to a specific field. It gives me the opportunity to explore a more intersectional feminism in a targeted approach.
Bibliophagy
ALK Positive Lung Cancer UK, (2023), Available at: https://www.alkpositive.org.uk Accessed: 2nd October 2023
Armstrong, K, J, (2018) Why The Handmaid’s Tale is so relevant today: Available at: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180425-why-the-handmaids-tale-is-so-relevant-today Accessed 18th September, 2023
Atwood, M. (1998) The Handmaid’s Tale, New York : Anchor Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC
Bear, M. (2017) Women & Power A MANIFESTO, Great Britain by PROFILE BOOKS LTD
Bigg, M. (2023) This Won’t Hurt, Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton An Hachette UK Company.
Borzello, F. (1998) Seeing Ourselves Women’s Self-Portraits, United Kingdom, Thames & Hudson Ltd.
Campbell, O (2021) Women in White Coats, How The First Women Doctors Changed The World Of Medicine, United States of America by Park Row Books by Park Row Books
Clarke J, Heart disease and gender in mass print media, (2010), Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378512209004332 Accessed 15th October 2023
Contemporary And, (2017) Exhibition Phoebe Boswell: For Every Real World Spoken, https://contemporaryand.com/exhibition/phoebe-boswell-for-every-real-word-spoken/#:~:text=For%20Every%20Real%20Word%20Spoken%20will%20demonstrate%20that%20a%20body,between%20groups%20are%20inevitably%20inferred. Accessed 10th September 2023
Dunn, N (2018), Talking To Women, Silver Press
Epps, P, 2016 Accessed at https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-8-women-who-turned-food-feminist-art Accessed at 10th October 2023
Fournier. L ,(2018), Autotheroy as Feminist Practice In Art Writing, and Criticism, The MIT Press (1.3)
Grant, C. (2022) A Time Of One’s Own, Durham, North Carolina, United States: Duke University Press.
Great Women Artist (2019) London, Phaidon Press Limited
Grosz, E. (1994), Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism, London: Routledge.
Hessel, K. (2022) The Story of Art, Without Men, Penguin Random House, Hutchinson Heinemann.
Higgie, J. (2021) The Mirror and the palette, Rebellion, Revolution and Resilience: 500 Years of Women’s Self-Portraits, Great Britain by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
http://www.k-lloyd.com/bio-statement Accessed: 15th October 2023
https://www.phoebeboswell.com/about Accessed 28 October 2023
Kay, A. (2022,2023) UNDOCTORED, The Story of a Medic Who Ran Out of Patients, Great Britain by Trapeze.
Lippard, L. (1995) The Pink Glass Swan, Selected Feminist Essays on Art, United States, by The New Press, New York Distributed by W. W. Northon & Compaany, Inc. New York.
Lloyd, K. Statement and Bio Accessed at:
http://www.k-lloyd.com/bio-statement Accessed: 15th October 2023
Lloyd, K. Conversations Like These: Accessed at https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/essays/conversations-like-these
Accessed 15th October 2023
Makufka, B. 2010, Käthe Kollwitz – Feminist Artist Accessed at http://philandfem.blogspot.com/2010/03/kathe-kollwitz-feminist-artist.html Accessed at 2nd October 2023
McCormack, C. (2021) Women In The Picture, Women, Art And The Power Of Looking, UK by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre.
Patterson, J. (2023) Critical Why the NHS is being betrayed and how we can fight for it, London, Mudlark Harper Collins Publishers.
Phagan. P, Women Picturing Women: From Personal Spaces to Public Ventures, (2021) Marquand Books Inc
Post-Grad Community, SURGE III Partnerships Announced, (2023) Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/study-at-ual/postgraduate-study/postgraduate-community/stories/surge-iii-partnerships-announced Accessed: 20 August 2023
Russeth, A. (2018) You Got to Crack a Few Eggs to Make an Omelette: Sarah Lucas and Compancy Shatter 1,000 Shells for New Museum Show. ARTnew: Access at: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/youve-got-crack-eggs-make-omelette-sarah-lucas-company-shatter-1000-shells-new-museum-show-10988/ Accessed 19th October 2023
Sandord, F, (2023) Sandord and Son, Hollywood Heart Attack Accessed at:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodHeartAttack Accessed at: 29th October 2023
Stafford-Williams, M, R Available at: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10135032/1/STAFFORD-WILLIAMS%20Single%20Sensor%20OpUS%20Beam%20Performance.pdf Accessed: 20th 09 2023
The Gourmand, (2022) The Gourmans’s Egg. A Collection of Stories & Recipes, TASCHEN; 1st
Tiwani Contemporary, (2017) Phoebe Boswell, For Every Real World Spoken, Available at: https://www.tiwani.co.uk/usr/documents/exhibitions/press_release_url/21/phoebe-boswell_for-every-real-word-spoken_press-release.pdf Accessed 14th August 2023
Whitaker, P. (2023) What is A Doctor? A GP’s Prescription For the Future, Great Britain by Canongate Books Ltd.
Women and Equalities Committee, (2023), Available at: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmwomeq/94/report.html#:~:text=The%20UK%20has%20one%20of,mortality%20ratios%20in%20the%20world.&text=There%20are%2C%20however%2C%20glaring%20and,higher%20than%20for%20White%20women. Accessed: 18 September 2023