Above Control, Pass~Port Store & Gallery
Emily McGuire, Audrey Newton and Caitlin Aloisio Shearer
14 March – 14 April 2024
Above Control brings together Maltese-Australian artist Emily McGuire, Pakistani-Australian artist Audrey Newton and Sicilian-Scottish-Australian artist Caitlin Aloisio Shearer to explore our nuanced relationships with notions of the body, desire and power. Embracing surreal and kitsch sensibilities, their works question projected ideals of how women should make, think, feel and behave, reclaiming ownership of these narratives with a mischievous wink. Acutely aware of the pressures and systems that nurture and uphold these tensions, Above Control encourages viewers to engage with the dualities of contemporary female experience.
McGuire’s soft sculptures begin with the body. Her work uses textiles, discarded clothing, rope and yarn to unravel assumptions about femininity, performative identity and Western value systems. In Higher Performer (2022), a pair of shoulder pads, removed from the inside of a secondhand blouse, are suspended in space and connected by cascading lengths of thread. Usually perceived as a tool for masquerading power, the shoulder pads become detached from this outdated symbol and recontextualised as a sign of vulnerability. Conjuring the body through the composition of her own dimensions, McGuire constructs a reflection of herself in pursuit of inner strength, opposed to external validation. For Today is all about me (2024), a discarded t-shirt emblazoned with this assertion is crushed in the binds of a twisted hessian rope, held down by two barrel knots. Babe you’ve got this (2023) sees another T-shirt boldly printed with this phrase pushed through the weft of a woven panel, compressed under the weight of a thick wool warp. Rendered into illegible forms, McGuire decommissions these motivational affirmations with her hands, simultaneously forging a bond with them through the physical process of doing so. Here, she finds herself negotiating a central tension: a desire to fulfil certain expectations only so that she might be free of them.
Through the entry point of magical realism, Newton explores the dichotomy between materiality and the subconscious. Her sculptural works and experimental approach to installation is guided by an interest in the agency of objects, spatiality and our experiences of them. In Anticipation (I Will Resist You Until You Can No Longer Resist Me but My Spirit Will Be Gone by the Time You Do) (2024), a swarm of fresh roses coated in latex, resin and wax beads emerge from the gallery wall, as if they have sprung from fertile soil. Gleaming and sensuous in a state of suspended time, yet mottled by mediums that mimic flesh, fat and bodily fluids, the roses exist at the interspace between beauty and ugliness, delight and repulsion. At once feminine and phallic, the artist probes at the gendering of objects and materials, and our desire to designate them. Initially inspired by a scene Newton witnessed while attending a dream workshop, the placement of each rose is determined by previous markings, registering an additional layer of intimacy with their surrounding environment.
As if upending a universal handbag, Aloisio Shearer’s practice invites viewers to observe and acknowledge the contents of the female psyche. Her paintings centre diaristic narratives, portraying female figures who are in the throes of navigating our neurotypical society. In 10,000 Steps (2023), a woman is depicted circumnavigating the earth, striding forth to achieve her daily step count goal. Active and unedited, she is determined in her quest: the top half of her frame leans ahead, her breasts sway forward in motion, her gaze resolute and legs strong. Straddling the earth with her feet, she inconceivably summons the ability to make it turn. As incredulous as this image may appear, it speaks to the force with which women apply themselves to equally incredulous acts and rituals brought about by society’s fixation with body image. Turning further inward, Me, Myself & I (2022) reveals a multifaceted depiction of the self. The work outlines a woman’s side profile repeated twice in one direction, another smaller version converges with them and faces the opposite way, illuminating the versions of our identities we present to others in contrast to our most true, authentic self. While Heart Chakra (2022) crops in on the hazy silhouette of a crouching woman awash in an aura of thin pink pigment, serving as a gentle reminder of our most important alignment.
Tethered to the cannon of feminist art practice that has come before them, the works of Above Control act as conduits between self and female otherness. Venturing from figurative to the abject, imbued with poetry and levity, they are at once personal musings and broader ruminations on how infectious ideas can affect the ways we see and define ourselves.
Read more: Pass~Port Gallery’s ‘Above Control’ show muses on the dualities of femininity, RUSSH Magazine
Photography by Magdalene Shapter and Pass~Port.
