I haven’t done any painting since the move. I suppose part of the reason is that I left lots of things unfinished, and it’s hard to get into the mindset to start over on something new. So I’m writing it all out of my system.
(Thanks to Declan Kelly for most of these photographs.The beautiful, non-blurry ones, mainly. The rest are work-in-progress shots from my own records, or video stills.)
This mural. The idea, I may as well explain, was to subvert the usual representations of female people in painting.
First of all, these women are not easy to stumble on. Unlike the half-naked women sprawled all over billboards and magazine racks, they live in the dark – three levels down in a derelict underground carpark, behind a failed urban development project in a coastal suburb. You have to make the journey to see them, almost like a pilgrimage. You have to bring your own light.
Second, they’re a bit threatening. For an unsuspecting visitor happening upon them by accident, for a fraction of a second it’s possible to mistake them for real people, lurking in the dark, looming a little larger than life. (It’s hard to find a context where a half-dressed woman is startling, when women’s bodies are used to sell everything from sports cars to dental floss.)
Third, they’re not passive Odalisques, displaying their bodies for your gaze.
Some of them seem to recoil or turn away, some of them ignore you completely, and even the ones that seem to meet your stare don’t quite connect. Their eyes are white, pupil-less.
They’re not particularly happy to see you. What the fuck are you even doing down here? It’s dark and it’s dangerous. They’re exposed, but you’re the one that’s vulnerable.
Some of them are muscular, masculine, more androgynous than the women you’re used to seeing.
Even the ones that are slight or frail, flanked by more imposing figures, don’t seem interested in or threatened by your presence, even if you’re not exactly welcome. There’s a lot of them. You’re outnumbered.
But still, they have one huge point of vulnerability. These are primarily drawings, rather than paintings – they are mostly chalk and charcoal.
Like so many women before them, they are easily erased.
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I never quite finished the mural. I never could decide what “finished” would look like. I have often wondered what would happen to them, My Girls. I supposed someone would vandalise them, or perhaps maintenance would paint over them, or maybe the rain and seawater would gradually keep leaking in until the whole place was submerged and My Girls would become surly mermaids. (I wasn’t going to do anything to protect them. Women don’t need saving.)
In the end, the powers that be, irked with all the illicit activity happening in the carpark (like music and underage drinking and vandalism and prostitution and car theft), decided to seal the whole place off.
They built a timber scaffold and then, with hilarious diligence, they covered every conceivable entry-way with plywood panels.
Whatever stray cats or lonely mould colonies that were hiding down there, they’ve been left to evolve in isolation. Presumably My Girls are still down there too, left to themselves at last, in an atmosphere even more eerie than before, with only the sound of rain and rushing water and the wind whistling in the grates.
I find this poignant and weirdly satisfying.
So goodbye to the carpark. It belongs to the women now.
