Monstare
@ MOP 2007
First Degree
@ Chrissie Cotter Gallery, Sydney. Curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham 2005
Shelf Life
Teratism (2006)
My work for Shelf Life consists of one or more sculptures based on research I have been undertaking into 'freaks' and teratology (the study of abnormal development and medical 'monstrosities').
Specifically, my work will be a realistic sculpture of a deformed baby preserved or 'pickled' in a jar of formaldehyde. The sculpture makes an obvious reference to the title of the exhibition in that these specimens of life are stored on the shelves of science labs or in sideshows. The baby in the jar will also be aged grotesquely with the features of an elderly man to demonstrate how 'life' is not necessarily extinguished by being bottled. In my work, there are two forms of life: the life of the freak made public spectacle and the uncanny life of the organism in its chemical womb. The idea of preservation of life/death is shown by the specimen's 'shelf life', an aging process that continues despite being bottled at birth.
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Snowdroppping
Snowdropping
vb. 1. The act of stealing underwear from clotheslines.
2. The act of stealing clothes from clotheslines usually carried out by an escaped prisoner on the run and in need of a quick change of appearance.
3. The act of airdropping food rations or aid packages over a wide area.
4. The act of exchanging semen from mouth to mouth while kissing.
The above definitions peg snowdropping as an ambivalent activity fraught with moral, legal, social and ethical entanglements. Categorised as slang or jargon, snowdropping is endowed with a surreptitious quality and, as a concept and a practice, snowdropping is improperly naughty and nice.
Legally, snowdropping is trespassing and theft when it involves stealing underwear or clothes but if intimate apparel is on display in public, sweet smelling and freshly laundered, unprotected and vulnerable, swinging on the line in the breeze, ripe for the picking (or pinching) the urge can be irresistible. Is this anti-social behaviour, sexual perversion or the harmless fulfilment of an overwhelming covetous desire? Should we be angry or flattered that someone finds our underwear so appealing they are willing to risk being caught in the act, subject to persecution or prosecution? In this instance, the motivation for the act of snowdropping is the thrill of the risk and the desire to touch and possess someone else's private, gendered objects. Or, it could be a purely practical need for clean underwear. One person's gain is another person's violation.
The second definition of snowdropping, having originated in Australian prisons, explains theft for the purpose of deception and disguise as pilfering for survival.
In the humanitarian community the snowdropping of foreign aid can be a highly problematic practice. Military airdropping of food rations, medical supplies and aid packages over war-ravaged areas is contentious when those carrying out the snowdropping operation have created the desperate need for humanitarian relief. What to include in the snowdropped parcels requires planning, careful thought and cultural sensitivity regarding utility - usefulness, practicality and safety. Even the colour of the aid parcels can have a life or death effect on those down below. During Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 in Afghanistan, US miliary planes airdropped over 2.4 million ration packs wrapped in yellow plastic, the same colour as US cluster bombs. Each parcel was marked "A Food Gift From the People of the United States of America".
The fourth definition classifies snowdropping as an unconventional sexual practice, an act of exchange that is reciprocal and pleasurable in the shared experience of giving and taking.
As the inspiration for a group show, Snowdropping is a particularly suggestive titular concept because each meaning of the word indicates an imaginative and practical act of creativity that links people through their relationship to things, objects and possessions. The ambivalence of Snowdropping is that it is both appropriate and inappropriate in its manifestations of secrecy and display, giving and taking, the stolen and the lost, the useful and the useless, the tangible and the intangible, self-expression and cultural pathology.
Dr Marise Williams
Lecturer, Visual Culture, University of Western Sydney