14 Sept - 8 Oct 1995

MAIL ORDER (FOR WOMEN)

Di Barrett

"Mail Order" was a series of works, made via computer technology and colour photocopying, using images drawn from adverts offering fetishistic clothing and accessories, and images of the unadorned un-retouched middle aged female body. The work looked at the operations of societal demand as regards appearance, behaviour and dress, and bought to bear on these the approaches of feminism and post-feminism. Corsets and shackles, nipple rings, all contain and remodel the body, and can be seen, at one level, as metaphorical for societal constraint and modelling. However, in this work they were never allowed such a simple positioning, as in current dialogues, fetishism occupies a particular and disputed position. On one hand it may be seen as a purely oppressive construction, implicit in the most primal forms of misogyny. On the other, it is asserted that the oscillations of fetishism are a paradigm of a deconstructive strategy for women, and that this reinforces sexual difference and plurality, and that, as such, it can be used in a framework to re-articulate all areas of sexuality. The fact that "Mail Order" never settled for any one position or reading allowed complex and different readings, where it celebrated libido and sexuality as something particular, as various and individual and complex, and operated both as critique and celebration.