'a little ladylike tinkling and smearing' is a new exhibition by Tamara Marwood, playfully subverting the Victorian notion that women's participation in the public world is be confined to 'tinkling' (embroidery) and 'smearing' (painting).
Constructed using traditional techniques of English piecing patchwork, this installation greets the viewer with a quilted enclosure, structurally supported by wooden chairs and piles of stacked, lifestyle magazines. Inside, a video animation featuring the semi nude female figures of Bendigo's Alexandra Fountain, flows across the horse hair surface. This fabricated interior asks us to contemplate the myriad, contradictory ways in which the female body is manifest in contemporary culture: as monumentalized allegory of public space; as subject of domestic labour; as superficial, glorified celebrity.
Exhibition runs from Oct 30 - Nov 29, 2008. Gallery 3, Craft Victoria, 31 Flinders lane, Melbourne, Vic. Tues - Sat, 10 - 5.
More info at craftvic.asn.au