BREAST: Installation at Latitude 53, 1992
Like the performance by Webb and Brennan, Mary Joyce’s Breast addresses contemporary social problems by explicitly foregrounding the issue of motherhood. The physical conditions and metaphors of motherhood are explored from a variety of perspectives which range from the personal and social to the symbolic and historical. In effect, Joyce presents a feminist archaeology of knowledge as the maternal is constructed and experienced through different orders of knowing. Upon entering Joyce’s installation, the viewer encounters seven large, diaphanous, white paper maché breasts delicately suspended from steel hoops. The light shines through these structures revealing all sorts of objects embedded within their fragile tissue: seeds, aromatic herbs, flowers, seaweed, pine-needles, threads and milk-sacs. Both the hanging structures and the shadows they cast emphasize the feminine shapes of the egg and breast which the artist describes as organic, pendulous, weighted and viscous. In the midst of these breast shapes the viewer discovers a sacred place of remembering which contains small clay figures of fertility goddesses. While the exhibition is sensually pleasurable, its darker underside gradually unfolds as the viewer realizes that there are also images relating to disease and mastectomy. Joyce parallels the mutilation and missing parts of the maternal body (hence the seven breasts in the exhibition) to the mutilated history of late 20th century western culture. As the breast is cut away and can no longer provide life-sustaining milk, recent wars, revolutions and the loss of progressive political ideals create an ailing social climate.
Bridget Elliot
From LOCATIONS Negotiating Space
1992, published by Latitude 53 Society of Artists and the Brian Webb Dance Company
Bridget Elliot
From LOCATIONS Negotiating Space
1992, published by Latitude 53 Society of Artists and the Brian Webb Dance Company