My work incorporates a range of media. It is about the control of power, balancing the differences between the representations of the male and the female, and the reversal of the control of power between the sexes.

The process of representing the traditional, powerful, masculine image of the horse and rider is one of the areas that I am looking at in my work. ‘Who Takes Control’ represents the tradition in art history that uses the horse as an embodiment of power, war, strength, energy, virility, and sexuality. Using a domestic material like soap in conjunction with this theme can be seen as subversive, because the material is more associated with the domestic goddess/engineer. This use of a domestic product in representing this traditional image is seditious. Using scent and pigment to heighten the senses, it allows us to reminisce the 1950’s housewife. This work addresses the boundaries between male and female power, sexuality, and motherhood and taps into the tradition of the two oldest images in art; the image of the horse and the image of a man. (Soap Horse and Rider, Sculpture)

The male torso is used traditionally to represent the anatomically correct body. My traditional representation is without personality. By casting it in soap, do I remove its masculinity, its sexuality? The perfectly toned muscular body, strong, but devoid of his power his potency, yet has presence and aura. Is this visual demonstration of control easy to understand, or is it ‘Wishful Thinking’. (Soap Torso, Sculpture)

I have experimented with a performance using a real horse and people to test out a metaphor for masculinity and power, to attempt to demonstrate a control of power over the male form by both riding the horse, and placing men in positions of vulnerability upon my stallion, and then instructing them to control the animal. This also questions the boundaries between what is and what is not art.

With my installation ‘Eye Candy’, in which the space and models are controlled by myself, am I celebrating male beauty or the female viewer’s gaze at male beauty without any sexual innuendo or vulgarity? The male models are the subject matter and controlled by the artist. I am trying to treat the male in the same way the female has been seen; in other words the ideal spectator is female and the image of the male should be to flatter her. Attempting to reverse the statement made by John Berger in 1972, he wrote in Ways of Seeing, of our fundamental assumption to images of women: (Eye Candy Stills, Installation)

“But the essential way of seeing women, the essential use to which their images are put, has not changed. Women are depicted in a quite different way from men - not because the feminine is different from the masculine - but because the ‘ideal’ spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him.” (Berger, 1972, P 64)



 

Brogdale Fruit Festivals
Brogdale Farm Cherry and Strawberry Delights 19 - 20 July 2008
Faversham Summer Fruits Fiesta 16 - 17 August 2008
Kent Cider Celebration 20 - 21 September 2008
ME13 8XZ Apple festival 18 - 19 October 2008

Four Exhibitions Curated by Becky Mair

Southeast Open Studios 6th - 22nd June 2008 Bredgar

Walls in Three Places 13th May - 13th June 2008 Charlton Art Centre Dover White Nave
Curated Rachael Daniels Kent

The Foundry Art Gallery April 2008 London
Assistant Rachael Daniels

Casting Off 4th - 10th April 2007 Horsebridge Arts and Community Centre
Kent
Curated Heather Defferary Becky Mair Apollo Group Show

The Secret Garden of England 3rd - 14th April 2007 artconnexion Lille France
Curated Rachael Daniels

Show Off 9th -14th December 2006 UCCAC Canterbury Kent
Apollo Group Show Degree Show

Artists Quarter February - March 2006 Oad Street Kent
Organised by Mrs Alice Quarry

Mercury Cohort October 2004 Castle Arts Festival Exhibition Canterbury &
Curated Mr David Lilford Ireland

Art House Exhibition November 2004 Little Ulcombe Maidstone
Organised by Julie Dow with Lisa J