I spotted this in the paper on Saturday:
Felt Is The Past Tense Of Feel.
Artist Catherine Bell sucks the ink from 40 squid, then spits it onto her dead father's suit, in a torrid video work of violence, grief, and the purging of emotion.
Well, how could anyone resist that? And it was literally around the corner, at Linden. So on Sunday, after cleaning the frog tank we tore ourselves away from the Sci Fi Channel , and went to have a look, and it was as gross and fantastic as it sounds. On two separate screens this lady is in differing stages of the process- in the early part the suit is still white, then later it's black. As are her face, hands, arms, hair...the suit in question is hanging in the corner of the gallery space, and it absolutely reeks. She gets right into it on the video, ripping squid apart with her fingers, squeezing, sucking & spitting ink all over herself. The pile of dead squid she's sitting in gets bigger & bigger. But what does it signify? No idea, I'm afraid, but I'm glad I saw it.
Note: if this isn't enough, you can go to her website and see pictures of her swimming in a pool full of live eels while dressed in a plastic fetish suit, in a prior performance piece called Head Over Eels.
Then we went into the city to do some shopping and have a drink. There are a few Christmas decorations up in the streets, but what I liked was the view from up in Chloe's Bar- all the banner-sized pictures of Nick Cave (from the Howard Arkley exhibition at Fed Square), the posters of Astro Boy (from the Tezuka exhibition at the NGV) and the huge Sidney Nolan Ned Kellys on the facade of Flinders Street Station(from an exhibition at Heide )
An interesting choice of seasonal decorations, and a very spiritual trio- I'd pick Ned as the Father, Astroboy as the Son, and Nick as the Holy Ghost.
When I was in Uni studying fine art I pureed lambs hearts then spat them over a sculture of a male. The hearts were mine and the sculture of the male was my previous boyfriend.
ReplyDeleteI really wanted to see Catherine Bells work, it sounds right up my alley. But alas I was not able this time...thanks for the review T.J.
Love ya work, I have started a fanclub! Hahahha heheheh ;-D
Have you noticed that the post time has not been changed to daylight savings? I am posting at 11pm but have a look at the post time...
Cheers, Michelle
But I will say this- according to the tracer, this post got me my oddest referral to date,when someone in England Googled "fetish" & "eels", and ended up here, for all of 2 seconds.
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