Text by Claire Walker.
Superior Goods and Household Gods is a group exhibition co-curated between Castlefield Gallery and Sarah Hardacre. It is part of the Manchester feminist festival Wonder Woman; which acts as platform to debate, discuss and highlight a range of feminist issues. The exhibition explores the politics of desire and how dominant ideologies have used these to manipulate what we perceive to be the satisfiers of our desires (which often remain out of our reach), such as lifestyle, possessions or an idealised appearance.
Suzanne Posthumus’ video of college pornography imagery explains the exhibition’s concept of unattainable desire, in both its fast paced images and Shepard’s tone soundtrack in which a climax is never realised. Sarah Hardacre and Hannah Farrell meanwhile both use collage from gentleman’s magazines to reflect a desire for the old style penthouse lifestyle and the image of the women within them. Farrell in her site-specific installation ‘Palm Springs’ (2015) creates a penthouse interior associated with the lifestyle of the women featured in the magazines. Through her incorporation of mirrors the audience becomes part of the performance and so their own image and perception of self is brought into question. This is what makes Farrell’s installation one of the more interesting pieces in the exhibition, as you are faced with the soft porn imagery of the women against your own reflection, thus personally engaging you with the work.
What makes this exhibition stand out from other feminist discussions within Wonder Woman is the incorporation of the two male artists Arnold Pollock and Adham Faramawy. It is the inclusion of a male perspective on what still remains a very female driven debate that makes the exhibition interesting and relevant to today’s society; in which commodification of the male body has lead to hyper masculinity. Faramawy’s video ‘Total Flex’ (2012) questions society’s obsession with the male body’s physique and its link to masculinity. Pollack meanwhile filmed a live performance ‘Posedown’ (2015) between himself and a female bodybuilder, which questions gender specific ideals of the curvy female opposed to a toned masculine body, as ultimately both bodybuilders strive for the same toned ideal.
The exhibition naturally falls into two separate discussions about the politics of desire due to the natural divide of gender. This could have impacted the cohesion of the exhibition, if the curators had not included Margret Harrrisons; ‘He’s Only a Bunny Boy But He’s Quite Nice Really’ (2011). The piece acts as an anchor for the discussions raised by the individual artists; as the work challenges the dominant ideology’s concept of gender and sexuality, in which eroticisation of the female body is readily accepted opposed to the male.
It is the formulation of a wider debate on the politics of desire that considers both genders as the objects or satisfiers, which makes this exhibition a refreshing change on the subjects of both body politics and feminism.
Claire Walker is a writer based in Wigan.
Images courtesy of Castlefield Gallery.
Superior Goods and Household Gods, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester.
6 March – 19 April 2015
Published 10.03.2015 by James Schofield in Reviews
501 words