- Coredev/ Locklite, Toowoomba Qld
- Lavender CE, Acica Ridge Qld

Bodies that Matter:

The body image is a double of sorts which allows us to imagine or reflect upon ourselves in our present situations - but it is also invoked in what allows us to project ourselves into future situations and back to past situations (Gatens 1996, p. 35).

Bodies that Matter reflects upon the female body and women's identity issues in contemporary western society. I do this by questioning and re-questioning traditional visual representations of the feminine form and how we view and locate the female body in our culture. I use fragments of the female body as both portraits of individuals and to emphasis differences as the norm. This fragmentation of the body is a metaphor of how our western society has fragmented and compartmentalised the feminine and the female body.

The rejection, the exclusion of a female imaginary certainly puts woman in the position of experiencing herself only fragmentarily, in the little-structured margins of a dominant ideology, as waste, or excess, what is left of a mirror invested by the (masculine) 'subject' to reflect himself, to copy himself (Irigaray 1985, p. 30).

Materials and techniques have been chosen to emphasise or confirm the underlying meaning of the work so they can operate on dual levels of image and process. Body fragments in glass, bronze, plaster and latex explore physical presence, as issues of dualities of life and the disconnection of mind and body.

One cannot separate body and mind, nor the senses from the intellect, particularly in the field where the underlying repeated jading of our organs calls for sudden shocks to review our understanding Antonin Artaud (Wilson et al. 1996, p. 4).

Elements of western culture can actively contribute to the disempowerment and compromise of women. This work is not just about women but involves women; they are a necessary part of the process, the procedure, the performance, and the ritual through the act of casting. By presenting the dualities of the feminine through the female body I try to invite the construction of new meaning, to expose and heal the wounds, to restore the mechanical hand to flesh and blood (see Johnson 1995).
The paradox is that women are all alike in some ways and dissimilar in others (Reinharz & Davidman 1992).

Skin Deep, Thinking Through Skin

Why should our bodies end at the skin, or include at best other beings encapsulated by the skin? Donna Haraway (1991, p. 178)

The skin, like the mould continues the dialogue of binary opposition of internal/external, mind/body, and matter/spirit. In the case of the shell-like mould it is the external negative space around the body, an added skin that defines the space, whereas the skin is the outer covering, the fleshy interface between bodies and the world, but both define the transition between interior and exterior. Skin, suggests Sara Ahmed (2001), remembers both 'literally in its material surface and metaphorically in the signification given to the surface' (Ahmed & Stacey 2001, p. 10). The skin, as the largest organ of our body has a number of functions, one being the key protective layer of the body. It can 'protect us from others and expose us to them' (Ahmed & Stacey 2001, p. 1).

I explore the concept of skin as an interface, a memory, a transition, and a connection in the works. My work, like the skin, is in a continual state of synthesis and transformation. Process is often the key to my research, followed by a transition to a new form or outcome. This resonates to the development of the works concerning the skin. I have admired the work of Eva Hesse and Kiki Smith for some time. As Smith (1995) suggests, women have a different historical relationship to materials with the connection to craft, to the handmade. Hence, women such as Hesse and Smith use non-traditional materials such as latex to interject, to be subversive within the art world. Smith suggests that this 'really destabilizes power, subverts the notion of how sculpture is made' (in Newman 1995: video).

Skin opens our bodies to other bodies: through touch, the separation of self and other is undermined in the very intimacy or proximity of the encounter (Ahmed & Stacey 2001, p. 6).

Materiality/Spirituality

A process of materialization that stabilizes over time to produce the effect of boundary, fixity, and surface we call matter (Butler 1993, p. 9).

Judith Butler (1993) notes: '… bodies that matter is not an idle pun, for to be material means to materialize, where the principle of that materialization is precisely what 'matters' about the body, its very intelligibility. In this sense, to know the significance of something is to know how and why it matters, where 'to matter' means at once 'to materialize' and to 'mean' (Butler 1993, p. 32).

Victoria Royds

Bibliography
Ahmed, S & Stacey, J 2001, Thinking Through the Skin, Transformations, Routledge, London.
Butler, JP 1993, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex', Routledge, New York.
Gatens, M 1996, Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power, and Corporeality, Routledge, London and New York.
Haraway, D 1991, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, New York and London.
Irigaray, L 1985, This Sex Which is Not One, 5 edn, Cornel University, Ithaca.
Johnson, RA 1995, 'Handless Maiden', in The Fisher King & the Handless Maiden: Understanding the Wounded Feeling Function in Masculine and Feminine Psychology, 1 edn, Harper Collins, New York, pp. 53-103.
Reclaiming the Body: Feminist Art in America 1995, film / video, M Blackwood, New York. Distributed by Michael Blackwood Productions.
Reinharz, S & Davidman, L 1992, Feminist methods in social research, Oxford University Press, New York.
Smith, K 1995, Kiki Smith: Whitechapel Art Gallery, London 24 February-23 April, 1995, Trustees of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London.
Wilson, S, Onfray, M, Stone, AR, Francois, S & Adams, P 1996, Orlan: Ceci est mon corps... Ceci est mon logiciel... This is my Body... this is my software... Black Dog Publishing Ltd., London.

This exhibition bodies that matter was sponsored by:

Metro Arts, Brisbane

Faculty of Arts, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba

NAVA Visual and Crafts Artists' Grant, managed by NAVA with financial assistance from the Visual Arts/Craft board of the Australia Council

Larfarge, Toowoomba

I would also like to thank all the women and girls who gave their time and bodies to make this work possible.