Bombshells and Pierced Bodies

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DIVERGENT

28 Jun - 27 Jul 2019
Assembly Point: Guild
152 Sturt Street

“Bombshell” was first used to describe screen goddess Rita Hayworth, her image painted without her consent and to her horror onto an atomic bomb. That bomb was detonated during the July 1, 1946 “Able” test on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

‘Bombshells’ ruptures the habits of language and societal conditioning that reflects a culture which objectifies and devalues women. It plays on modes of patriarchal representations of women, highlighting the gendered distortions projected onto female bodies as “devastating” and “dangerous”. Simultaneously, it draws on the power of ancient mythologies of the sacred feminine and goddess fertility archetypes.

Employing humour and satire, Grenade talks to the serious issues of gendered violence. Referencing the body, breast and nipple forms, this work morphs into a hand grenade, with a chrome pull ring double-entendre that might also be seen as a nipple-piercing. Round spherical forms reference “Moon Jars” which were originally made during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). Embodying the archetypal feminine, these curvaceous, plain white ceramic forms resemble a full moon, with an explosive twist, more akin to ocean mines, bombs and grenades.

These incendiary objects express a compacted yet potentially explosive emotional force through combining mundane domestic objects with ceramic sculptural forma, referencing the most dangerous place for women in Australia, the threat of violence in the domestic sphere, which Coronavirus isolation measures have intensified and compounded.

These work speak to the volatile pandemic of gendered violence and extreme duress experienced by women and those who are identify as female. In Australia, more than one woman a week is killed by a male partner or relative.

Bombshells draw on the rhetoric of terrorism and bomb threats, the ‘othering’ of perpetrators, whilst calling attention to the real terrorist threat to women in Australia of assault, injury, illness and death most often perpetrated by a male.

Who then is the bomb?