more research

This is the work of Juz Kitson- Australian artist

looking over her pictures i felt a bit strange about how similar our interests in materials were plus looking at 'uncomfortable territories', i think we'd make great friends collecting roadkill together. 

http://changingskin.co.uk/juz-kitson

Fascination and rejection have the same meaning while one looks at her work. These feelings come together simultaneously, their confrontation, their contrast, make them be just one. Her work seduces at the same time that it shocks. We as spectators feel totally uncomfortable.

"I have an interest in ever so slightly repulsing the viewer at first experience," Kitson said. "They are unsettled. This uneasiness then turns into wonder and in a later stage, fascination."

She works with a range of materials - including wax, latex, clay, alpaca wool, seaweed, horse and human hair and bone, creating sculptures and ceramic installations and so explores what she calls “uncomfortable territories”. 

Human organs such as the heart and stomach are regular motifs in Kitson's installation work. She is interested in the body’s internal structure and connects each organ/sculpture by open orifices which are sexually suggestive. 

This is Jamie McCartney's "The Great Wall of Vagina"

quite a fascinating piece with depicting vaginal diversity in a detailed and fairly respectful way, I like how its not a symbolic or ambiguously hidden representation of vaginas. It's almost clinically documenting the variety in a clean (white plaster possibly adding to the elegant presentation) tasteful instillation, no difference made between culture, age, or ethnicity. 

Leigh Bowery
http://thestimuleye.com/tag/leigh-bowery/ 
Leigh Bowery's work I've been a fan of for his costume, performance and perverse nature, the pictures in this site are from one his shows of "the birth". He performs with his band then towards the end of the set gives birth to his assistant/wife Nicola as the naked bloody new born, and proceeds to 'vomit' and urinate in her mouth. As far as shocking people goes (as well as commenting on gender representation in a lot of his work) he is admirably ambitious and dedicated to push the boundaries.

Judy Chicargo

 http://www.mariabuszek.com/ucd/ArtHistoryII/PopPoMo.htm

Her piece here is quite amazing with the amount of work that would have gone into it, plus its quite informative which i like. It's quite a serious presentation of female roles throughout history while indicating to the vagina in the shapes of the ceramic plates which is all together quite a strong female representation.

Julia Kristeva- 'Powers of Horror: An essay on Abjection'

 

Approaching Abjection P.g 4 

It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite. The traitor, the liar, the criminal with a good con- science, the shameless rapist, the killer who claims he is a savior. . . . Any crime, because it draws attention to the frag- ility of the law, is abject, but premeditated crime, cunning mur- der, hypocritical revenge are even more so because they heighten the display of such fragility. He who denies morality
is not abject; there can be grandeur in amorality and even in crime that flaunts its disrespect for the law—rebellious, liber- ating, and suicidal crime. Abjection, on the other hand, is im- moral, sinister, scheming, and shady: a terror that dissembles,*
a hatred that smiles, a passion that uses the body for barter

instead of inflaming it, a debtor who sells you up, a friend who

stabs you.*. . . 

 p.g15

PERVERSE OR ARTISTIC

The abject is related to perversion^ The sense of abjection that I experience is anchored in the superego. The abject is perverse because it neither gives up nor assumes a prohibition, a rule,
or a law; but turns them aside, misleads, corrupts; uses them, takes advantage of them, the better to deny them. It kills in the name of life—a progressive despot; it lives at the behest of death—an operator in genetic experimentations; it curbs the other's suffering for its own profit—a cynic (and a psychoan-

p.g 16

alyst); it establishes narcissistic power while pretending to reveal the abyss—an artist who practices his art as a "business." Cor- ruption is its most common, most obvious appearance. That is the socialized appearance of the abject.

An unshakable adherence to Prohibition and Law is necessary if that perverse interspace of abjection is to be hemmed in and thrust aside. Religion, Morality, Law. Obviously always ar- bitrary, more or less; unfailingly oppressive, rather more than less; laboriously prevailing, more and more so.

Contemporary literature does not take their place. Rather, it seems to be written out of the untenable aspects of perverse or superego positions. It acknowledges the impossibility of Religion, Morality, and Law—their power play, their necessary and absurd seeming. Like perversion, it takes advantage of them, gets round them, and makes sport of them. Nevertheless, it maintains a distance where the abject is concerned. The writer, fascinated by the abject, imagines its logic, projects himself into it, introjects it, and as a consequence perverts language—style and content. But on the other hand, as the sense of abjection is both the abject's judge and accomplice, this is also true of the literature that confronts it. One might thus say that with such a literature there takes place a crossing over of the dicho- tomous categories of Pure and Impure, Prohibition and Sin, Morality and Immorality.

In having a consistent fascination for the weird and perverse I wanted to find some scholarly writings on the topic to help articulate beyond just simply 'coz its ma jam'

I'm still trying to read through this article because it's quite poetically dense to get through and understand.. its a working progress

 

 

Kiki Smith

http://feministartnow.blogspot.com.au/2010/09/kiki-smith-and-human-body.html

this is some of her more confronting works with feminist concepts

 Cindy Sherman

http://janetsatelier.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/5-puzzles-of-contemporary-art/
(this website is a bit shit, i just wanted their photo)














 Her work with transforming herself into different female symbols subverting the aesthetic of beauty in glamor shots is astounding, one women becoming so many different characters is impressive as a collection. But it was this picture above that caught my eye in relation to my work with the strange arrangement of body parts in the way that makes you feel like you're being seduced by a pedophile, it's oddly violating even though you can see they're just objects. It could be to do with the expression on the face or the super hairy vagina sex toy thing, or even the pregnant time belly and breasts.... actually yeah its everything. It's the skill in the simplicity of arrangement for a photo that i really like.