Couple: exploring the idea of paired objects in my work

Abstract

This research paper explores how my studio practice is informed by my regard for ‘thing’, ‘sex’ and ‘the body’. In this project I assess how I use these words and their meanings to make an idea of a paired object. Representing a paired object in three different motions will be yearn, join and hang, which ultimately stand for desire, pleasure and formlessness. In the introduction, called The Use of Thing, Sex and the Body in Art, I discuss how these principal themes have been utilised and defined in art. This is in order to clarify how these are important to the assessment of my practice. For this section I mainly referred to the texts The Object: Documents of Contemporary Art by Antony Hudek, The Foucault Reader by Paul Rabinow and Sally O’Reilly’s The Body in Contemporary Art. The remaining thesis discusses how the terms ‘thing’, ‘sex’ and ‘the body’ can be broken into objects of desire, pleasure and formlessness with each of these being divided into yearn, join and hang. At the beginning of each chapter I explain how yearn, join and hang are another way of defining objects of desire, pleasure and formlessness. The reason I have chosen to use separate words is because I feel the artwork would be restricted if it were limited to the words of theory alone. By choosing to express and build my work from the feelings of yearn, join and hang I have been able to expand, bring new insight and renewed life into the theoretical concepts I use. The three words yearn, join and hang form my chapters. They serve to bring the following ideas of objects of desire, pleasure and formlessness into distinct focus with the theories of the lack, the lover, primitivism, touching, self-reflection, the uncanny, skin and naturalness. The paper investigates the work of a select group of contemporary artists who employ these themes namely: Julie Rrap, Sarah Lucas, Fiona Hall, Louise Bourgeois, Mikala Dwyer and Andy Goldsworthy. My primary source for the chapter Yearn was Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism and Social Dissent by David Bate. For the chapter Join I examined The Erotic Object: Sexuality in Sculpture from prehistory to present day by Susan Quinnell. Lastly for the chapter Hang I researched Formlessness: a user’s guide by Yves Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss as a key text to draw out important ideas particularly in relation to the materials and forms in my works. Through inquiry into these terms, artists and theorists, the paper will highlight the process of how precise forms and materials can embody and perhaps amplify human sexual feelings and actions.