Here are a couple of notes on the conversation we had recently -I wrote this soon after I had spoken to you and thought I would send it once I updated my website  - however I'm going to start working on this tomorrow (when the kids start school!!) , so will let you know when this its complete/should be soon! - probably next week.

As you recognised at the heart of my work is the idea of female identity. Recently I have been exploring this via ‘The Mother’ as identity; and the mother of all mothers; The Virgin Mary.

In a recent sculpture Mary The Weeping Machine I have turned her eyes into cones that echo’s the  destruction of the statue of Mary in the film the Exorcist. But turning the cones outwards.

I did a bit of research about the origins of The film The Exorcist… Regan (which means serpent with the sharpest tooth) is possessed by the demon Pazuzu – a consort of serpent mother Lamia from Babylonian diety. Pazuzu is presented in the opening of the film during the excavation of Iraq tombs and also in drawings made by Regan later in the film.

Pazuzu has a serpent penis – which got me thinking about the various switches of gender assignment in the film. The serpent is often associated with male as well as female origins. However coming from Roman Catholic roots Eve and the serpent are inextricably linked and the word cunning forever associated with female genitals.

So I tend to imagine the serpent as female. The demon that possesses Regan in the film is apparently male – he speaks in deep tones, which is naturally associated with maleness. Therefore the male of hundreds of years old possesses the 12 year old girl. The virgin girl. She self harms ‘help me’ into her skin from the inside out reminding us of her presence and non-consensual sexual involvement.

 When I first watched The Exorcist (when I was 18 years old)I was horrified at the sight of the statue of Mary in the church having been vandalised by Pazuzu (or suggestively by him!). However this act in isolation now seems comical – adding pointy boobs and a pointy penis to a religious statue. But it really shocked me when I first saw it! Probably because of my religious upbringing and the blasphemous confidence of the statement expressed through creative vandalism.

Over the phone we discussed Madonna and her use of conical bras and how the Catholic Church features in her work; Especially like a prayer video with black Jesus coming to life from a crying statue. Is she taking the phallus and making two of them? Double the power (of the woman) of the one phallus male!

I have also been looking into the phenomenum of crying statues and the collective wish tank of need for physical response by ghosts of the past. When the statue of Mary cry's she is present once again, she is back from the dead, she is risen!

The imagery of the exorcist is a reoccurring reference in my drawings and writings via phallus/ or the cone shape and the contorted body.

I didn’t mention on the phone but another female incarnation I have been paying much homage and attention to recently is the archetypal witch – and I have been exploring the position of the broom stick as phallus – as well as pointed hat, pointed nose and pointed fingers. I think this also bears reference to the extremities of Regan, pushing the body from the inside out (if you imagine a broom stick handle pushing against a white sheet!). I recently completed an online poetry course about the occult and explored the notion of the modern day witch.

Have you ever seen ‘love witch’ it’s really good!

I have been buying ceramics form charity shops of female figures and transforming them from beautiful girl to green skinned witch. I especially wanted to work with ready made for this particular effect as I have been thinking about transformation. When in NY I visited the Brooklyn Museum and they had an exhibition about gender reassignment in the after -life. It is a recent discovery that Mummies were painted red so that a female could temporarily switch genre to male in the tomb. The colour red was believed to hold magical properties that would allow reassignment. The ancient Egyptians believed that the male had the fetus in sperm form and the female grew the baby after sex. So if the female could transform to male during death he would then be the creator of the baby.

I have the text for this exhibition (gender and the tomb) – so can reference this further if you are interested.

As well as being influenced by Catholic religion I also include other various myths from Egypt, Greece and Rome – and mix them all up - again I can elaborate further...

As we spoke about artists -

A couple of artists that I thought of were Sue De Beer  - I saw her work recently and was reminded of some photographs she made years ago that are both horror and gore.

Also two poetry books that are really good about witches are Savage by Rebecca Tamas (Clinic) and Malkin by Camille Ralphs (Emma Press)

http://www.suedebeer.com/photos_1.html

I really like radical feminist such as Caolee Schneeman - but I was speaking to Sue and thought it would be good to concentrate more on gender identity - I just included this text as it seemed relevant to the above information about the serpent penis demon Pazuzu.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/mar/10/carole-schneemann-naked-art-performance

http://witcombe.sbc.edu/eve-women/schneeman.html

 


All the best

Look forward to hearing from you soon

Dom