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PhD supervisor: Professor Mignon Nixon
Working title for PhD: Erotic Objects, Erogenous Zones: Fetishism and Sexual Difference (1957–1986)
My project concerns the relationship between fetishism and sexual difference, focused on the work of British artist Rose English (b. 1950), Polish artist Alina Szapocznikow (1926–1973), and American artist Hannah Wilke (1940–1993). Despite working in varying cultural and geographical contexts, I consider their kindred response to the socio-political environment, affected by accelerated consumerism, post-war cultural production, and the sexual revolution. By positioning their work in dialogue, the research examines their artistic engagement with commodity culture, eroticism, and spectacle, opening up a novel field of enquiry regarding libidinal drives, sexuality, and the social construction of gender. Strategies of ambivalence, humour, and irony will be framed in relation to the politics of pleasure and consumption. Their shared artistic interest in merging the corporeal with everyday objects, representing the body as both commercial and sexual fetish object, reinforces the basis of their grouping. Their dissolution of boundaries and blurring of binaries, thereby staging the body as a landscape of indeterminate erogenous zones, will also be considered. The research will relate this mutability to the multidisciplinary output of the artists, integrating an analysis of drawing, painting, and sculpture, alongside dance, performance, and video. By uniquely looking at the aspect of fetishism that connects English, Szapocznikow, and Wilke, this original project will build on recent scholarship informed by feminist and psychoanalytic theories.
My writing and art criticism has appeared in Artforum, ArtReview, art-agenda, Art Monthly, Burlington Contemporary, Flash Art, Frieze, The White Review, and elsewhere. I have also contributed to books published by Phaidon Press. I have written on the work of numerous artists for exhibition texts and gallery publications, including Sophie Barber, Heidi Bucher, Nicola L., Ketty La Rocca, Frances Scott, and Jo Spence.
Publications:
- ‘Yvonne Rainer: The Choreography of Film,’ The Moving Image Review & Art Journal, vol. 8, no. 1+2 (September 2019)
Conference papers and presentations:
- ‘Life or Theatre? Visual Autofiction and Feminism,’ AUTO-, Royal College of Art, London (23 May 2019)
Media Appearances:
Exhibitions/Events:
- Curated the Bodily Objects exhibition, with work by Penny Slinger, Rose English, Renate Bertlmann, and Helen Chadwick, presented online by Richard Saltoun Gallery (1 May–30 June 2020) and realised by Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh (17 July—30 August 2020)
- Organised the Beyond the Body screening programme, showing films by Chantal Akerman, Marcie Begleiter, Bryony Gillard, and Sally Potter, among others, The Horse Hospital, London (2018–2019)
Lectures/Talks:
• 'Hélène Vanel at the 1938 International Surrealism Exhibition', reading at the Motor Dance Journal launch event, ICA, London (15 November 2022)
• ‘Women Artists and Surrealism’, guest lecture for the online Women and Art Summer School, Sotheby's Institute of Art (13 July 2020)
• ‘The Art of the Avant-Garde’ and ‘The Personal is Political,’ two-part lecture as part of The Art of Feminism, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (11 January; 22 February 2020)
• ‘On Meat Joy,’ introduction to Meat Joy (1964), Evidentiary Bodies: Celebrating Barbara Hammer & Carolee Schneemann, LUX Moving Image, London (14 July 2019)
Awards:
- The PhD project is fully funded by the London Arts & Humanities Partnership (LAHP)
Teaching:
- Writing Support TA for BA1 (Autumn Term 2022)
