Domestic Pirate

The body of work Domestic Pirate presents carefully crafted artworks that subvert the notion of home and nostalgia (the longing for home) through the transformation of domestic objects that speak of a disenfranchised past. Reminiscent of the relics, curiosities and fetishised mementoes of the sacralised space of the working class front room; of the home shrines of popular folk culture; the sculptural objects that make up this body of work lull the viewer into a false sense of security, presented here as ambivalent ornamentation. There is a haunted quality to these works, they appear to reference a time and a place now past, the objects both familiar yet strangely uncanny. There is a presence of girlhood as potentially dangerous, of adolescence as a liminal state, a time of uncertainty and impossible dreams. Bridie is a series of images cut from a vintage wedding magazine, mounted on plywood, these ambivalent ornaments have been carelessly scribbled on by toddlers in brightly coloured felt tipped pen. These disrupted objects seem to tell of soiled dreams and expectations. Lucid Dreaming is a series of bevelled edged mirrors, like those from your grandmother’s front parlour; transformed by the application of collaged imagery. The distorted scenes show young girls cut from storybook annuals, placed in ambiguous landscape narratives, accompanied by horses that appear to be both friend and foe. The viewer catches glimpses of themselves in fragments of clear mirror prompting them to question their complicity in these narrative scenes. Working from a contemporary feminist agenda; this is a body of work that questions assumptions about women, class, history, narrative and popular folk culture. As an exhibition of sculptural objects, Domestic Pirate cleverly contextualises both gallery and domestic space by confronting our expectations whilst entertaining us with wit, skill and intelligence.