The Drapery Series
Over the last few years, I have focused my work on drapery, a progression from the incidental objects in portraiture and still life to a subject in its own right. The complexity of the folds of fabric and the subtleties of white on white are issues that have captivated many artists before me. I began to enjoy not only the complex and ambiguous shapes of drapery in itself, but also to use drapery as a metaphor for flesh, for spirituality, and for the feminine. I have explored the subject in both 2D and 3D works: photographs, drawings, watercolour, oil, acrylic paintings; and fabric, clay, steel, aluminium and bronze sculptures, and in this essay I hope to explore the meanings of this work, which, not surprisingly, enfolds issues that I find extremely important.
The meanings of the drapery have evolved for me over the years. The original drawings, paintings and sculptural works were focused on using draped ceramic forms that were evocative of the vulva and therefore of the feminine. I found the ambiguities of the drapery intensely interesting and beautiful. They seemed to carry great weight and I have spent a number of years now trying to excavate and express their buried meaning.
The spatial nature of the sculptures increased my concept of the relationship between the feminine and the draperies - they were beautiful, seemingly pliable and sensual, qualities that are associated with women. The folds and curves were evocative of women’s bodies and specifically of the vulva. However, as I began to combine the draperies with other elements, bones and wood that I handbuilt and carved from clay, I found that the work was developing meanings for me that I hadn’t foreseen.
Sleeping Venus (Giorgione/Titian), c. 1508-1510, Oil on canvas, 108 x 175 cm, Gemaeldegallerie Alte Meister, Dresden
The porcelain draperies visually represent all the stereotypical qualities that we ascribe to femininity: weakness, pliability, softness, passivity, receptivity, flow, sensuality, grace, the whiteness that symbolises purity or innocence. Of course, in many cases the assignment of these qualities is completely arbitrary, changing from era to era, culture to culture. These are constructs that we impose upon people; artificial constructs to support the artificial concepts of ‘gender.’
Adding more elements to the work, combining the drapery sculptures with the stoneware ‘bone’ or ‘wood’ extends this analogy to encompass the ‘masculine’ stereotypes. Qualities that we generally accept as masculine are: strength, stability, independence, discipline. In comparison to our ideas of femininity, we expect men to be tough, unchanging, inflexible. The interplay of the elements that we see as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ allow for a dialogue of values and interpretations. Do we see the cloth covering the bone like a scrap of skin as offering a kind of protection? Or do we perhaps see the cloth as being moulded by the strength of the underlying shape?
The bones that I use as supports are pelvic bones. Of course, both male and female have pelvic bones, but the pelvis is most often associated with the female, with immediate connotations of the pelvis cradling the womb and all the other hidden workings of the female reproductive system. Considering that women are more rigidly confined by the expectations of their reproductive role, the pelvic bones could be read as ‘female’, which would render the drapery, as opposite, as male. The same trick could be played with the wooden pieces, where it is not the strength and rigidity of the male that is symbolised, but rather the conflation of ‘woman’ with nature, with trees and wind and earth.
Essentially, these meanings explore the characteristics that we insist on defining as feminine and masculine. I seek to visually subvert some of these assumptions. It is important to dissect and examine these stereotypes, and realise they are mostly artificial constructs based in culture, rather than biology. These kinds of stereotypical gender roles limit and harm us all.
The Lady of the Assumption Gives St. Thomas Her Belt (detail) Bartolomeo Della Gatta, 1475
Drapery is such an evocative subject, rich in associations. We think of it in terms of ‘fine art’, and, as such, it has an aura of refinement, of the higher expectations of humanity, the realms of art, literature, theatre, music. It has associations with the voluminous stage curtains of the theatre, or the drawn-back curtain in a painting, implying that we are witness to something private, a window to a different reality, a different world. We perhaps have an expectation of something being presented to an audience, as frequently seen with the classical nude, a passive female body presented, eyes down-turned, for the delectation of the male viewer.
In art, drapery is used to cover or reveal the nude and becomes inextricably associated with the body. If the body is material, earthy, visceral, then the drapery can be seen as spiritual, mental, a symbol for the higher realms of consciousness, it’s tight folds and wrinkles reminiscent of the cortical curves of the brain itself. Soaring, floating, or draped, devoid of the flesh that it is used to conceal, the drapery could be seen as a metaphor for the soul. The swaddling cloth and the shroud, both used to cover the nakedness of the defenceless body at its most vulnerable, means that drapery also has connotations of new life and of death.
Used symbolically in the middle ages and the Renaissance, the swagged fabric of the robes of the Virgin Mary draped between her open knees symbolised the womb from which Jesus would be born. The flowing robes and veils that have been used extensively in religious art, and that we still associate with religious beliefs, allow an association of drapery with oppressive and enforced ‘modesty.’ Varying cultures, including our own, continue to police the bodies of women, demanding modesty or mocking it. We have only recently begun to accept the concept that women are not to blame for the injustices, oppression and violence visited upon them. My work, dealing with the concealment inherent in drapery, while evoking the secret recesses which the drapery hides, could be read as a comment on these contradictions.
The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. Bernini. Basilica of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome
The Renaissance and Rococo periods revelled in drapery, and the master sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) is a direct influence on my work. His carved marble draperies are alive and lively, sensuous and evocative of the very flesh which the fabric conceals. In Bernini’s sculptures, the drapery becomes a metaphor for the flesh, most notably in The Ecstasy of St Teresa, where the female saint’s flowing robes open to receive the thrusting arrow of God’s love, even as St Teresa’s religious reverie imitates the more earthly ecstasy of orgasm.
As a response to the Rococo opulence of Bernini’s sculptures, my work focuses on the drapery alone. The folds of fabric are isolated from the body beneath and viewed as objects in themselves. Where the decorative and romantic aspects of Bernini’s sculptures are almost overwhelming, isolating just the drapery allows us to focus on and ponder the meaning inherent in it, as it is, rather than as a support to a larger artwork.
Feminism is also great influence in my life and my work. The short fictional story by Barbara Baynton, (1857-1929), ‘The Chosen Vessel,’ explores, in a uniquely Australian environment, many of the ways that women are seen as vessels or repositories of the experiences and expectations of men, rather than as people in their own right. Over the years, clouds, drapery and the Australian bush have evolved as a kind of subconscious language for me, with ambiguous, anamorphic shapes hiding in their complexities. Drapery especially seemed to consistently evoke the hidden recesses and landscapes of a woman’s body. My drapery artworks were preceded by a period of focusing on the crouching figure as well as nests and eggs. There is some deeper link here between creativity and the female body, the womb that produces the ‘intricate and folded rose’[1] of the foetus.
I have also started to consider the possibility that the draperies, as coverings, can be read as any oppression that obscures the reality underneath. In this way they can serve as a metaphor for colonialism, the whitewashing of history or the human interventions in the environment that are contributing to our destruction. The drapery can also be construed as a symbol for human civilisation. We alone have developed the concept of covering ourselves and the technology to produce fabric. Therefore the drapery in the landscape can be seen as human intervention in the environment, the imposition of agriculture and architecture onto the landscape, moulding it to our needs and desires, and destroying it in the process.
This imposition is always of a similar stamp, whether it is the dominion over nature that results in climate crisis, the imposition of patriarchy or colonialism, there is a level of separation and division, of othering, that allows these hegemonies to take root.
These many interpretations and meanings, their fluidity and ability to be turned inside out, can be linked to Deleuze’s principles of ‘The Fold’. I feel that these ‘finite number of components produce an infinite number of combinations’[2] of meaning. All these thoughts and threads are the impetus that keeps an artist searching for the perfect way to draw together and express or in fact, exorcise, their own unique repetitive themes, as if there is a solution or end or final satisfaction in art, instead of the endless and ever deeper dredging.
I spent a long time trying to define the one true meaning in my artwork until I began to consider that the ambiguity of meaning is one of the work’s inherent elements. The artworks started with the visual ambiguity of the drapery evoking women’s bodies and by extension, women’s experiences. This ambiguity, the ever shifting interpretation is at the core of the meaning of the work. It comments on the root of the problems that we face: the concept of superiority and dominance that leads to patriarchy, sexism, racism, the climate crisis. Part of the solution to these problems is the acknowledgement of ambiguity, the understanding that there are many voices to be heard, many viewpoints meanings.
And so, even with these many meanings that I have found in the work, there is the possibility that more will emerge over time, that I will find more or different interpretations. I will find new layers and facets of meaning over time and it is my aim to make work that does have that complexity. Because of this ambiguity, the viewer may find their own set of meanings in the work, and this may change over time as well.
In short, drapery, while being appealing on both a visual and tactile level, evoking sensuality, sexuality and gender, also encompasses a wide range of metaphor, speaking of seperation, concealment, oppression and dominance in individuals, society and the environment; and encompassing the dichotomies of nudity and coverings, dominance and subjugation, corporeality and consciousness, life and death, religion and spirituality, flesh and soul.
Finally, I always aim to make art that is both beautiful and meaningful, both to myself and to the viewer. Ultimately, making art is about communication, not just between the artist and the audience, but also a conversation that the artist has with herself. I make art to discover something about myself and the world. I want my work to explain myself to the world and explain the world to myself. Art is both the process of questioning and a glimpse towards the answers.
[1] Wright, Judith. Woman to Man. 1949. http://allpoetry.com/poem/8521455-Woman-To-Man-by-Judith-Wright
[2] O’Sullivan, Simon. Various Entries in the Deleuze Dictionary, p3 http://www.simonosullivan.net/articles/deleuze-dictionary.pdf