Pleaser heels

^ (shoes that have been ordered to cast in layers of latex) ^ – made to look like pleaser heels due to the height of the platform.

Clear shoes – also known as ‘stripper stilettos’ are heeled shoes made from a transparent material. They often contain novelties such as liquids, flashing lights and even live fish. They’re often made with PVC, lucite and acrylic resin.

Provocative and often associated with erotic performers an pornography. They often exaggerate sexual image (depending on how and what they are worn with) and are worn with the intention of arousing others.

‘Fuck me shoes’

Boot fetishism is a sexual fetish focused on boots. Boots have become the object of sexual attraction amounting to fetishism for some people and they have become a standard accessory in BDSM scenes (where leather, latex and PVC boots are favoured) and a fashion accessory in music videos. Boots are seen as perhaps the most fetishistic of all footwear and boots may be the most popular fetish clothing attire

Boot fetishism may be accompanied by a fetish for the material from which it is made, such as leather, rubber, or latex.

 

Latex

How is latex linked with feminist art/art made by female artists?

 

Latex as a material derived from nature, produced from plants – innocent – clean – relations to skin.

Latex also as a fetishised and commercial material – used in a sexual way and fetishised due to its ‘second skin’ like qualities. – used as a material to make rubber gloves, condoms and clothing.

• experiment with latex using both of these themes and ideas around the material – similar to the transparent clothing I’ve been making, produce latex clothing (maybe fill with liquid material)

In the same ‘metaphorical’ way that the transparent PVC bag was unwanted baggage that had to be carried around, both consciously and unconsciously, the shoes have a similar intention. However changing from PVC to latex has meant I’ve taken more of an interest to the form and the connotations the material could have.

• experiment with stripper stiletto shoes to see how the object/mould of the object affects the material

Eva Hesse – latex

Many feminist critics and artist felt there was something uniquely feminine about art works that were created by women. Is feminity related to the materials the female artists use? Is there a contrasting difference between male and female art? Every woman lives in a body which is coded as female and a female artist cannot deny that their work articulates this experience to a certain degree. It is possible to view Eva Hesse’s work in such a light, particularly when considering her soft, anthropomorphic imagery. Critics such as Lucy Lippard have also observed that Hesse’s works evoke elements of the female body. After Hesse’s untimely death, reception of her work grew to mythic proportions amongst many women artists. Artists such as Lynda Bengalis were inspired by Hesse to make works where they poured latex directly onto the gallery floor, an action which critics perceived as declaring a strong female presence. While a similar interpretation was not upheld about Hesse’s work during her lifetime, in the context of the women’s movement of the 1970s this reading can be more easily understood. Latex is a particularly expressive, flexible and sensuous material, which takes on colour well and allows for a hand-made quality that was shunned by Minimalist artists of the time.

 

After the publication of Hesse’s diaries in the 1970s much writing on Hesse focused on her self-doubt and psychological fragility. Link up ways of thinking with the materials – latex as a fragile material with short life span before it disintegrates. Compared to materials such as plaster or concrete which take longer to erode. Extracts from her diaries have been used to present Hesse as a woman who suffered from the injustices of a male-oriented society and whose work often referred to this theme. It is understandable that this view of Hesse should come about in the context of the rise of Feminism in the 1970s, but it is also problematic. Some art historians and artists have countered such readings by pointing out that Hesse was never marginalised in the New York art scene of her day, and was at the centre of artistic debate and innovation. The premise of this exhibition is to focus on Hesse as someone whose practice engages with the materiality of the art object rather than expressing personal or subconscious insecurities. Do  I want to move away from my personal insecurities and focus on materiality? Are my personal experiences always going to be in the subconscious of my work?

Untitled 1965 (drawing)
Hesse’s early drawings returned again and again to sexual or fetishistic imagery. Latex as a fetishised material – when spoken of its often perceived as a sexual material due to its links. Latex often acts as a second skin and can stimulate physical sensations when fetishised and used in this way. Could I explore working with the two extremes of latex – the natural material thats linked to skin as a material or the fetishised use of latex? She was inspired by the legacy of Surrealism and by a circle of artist friends whose work explored similar ideas. Such drawings allude to a concern with ideas from the subconscious. Hesse did have an interest in psychoanalysis and her diaries are witness to her thoughtful self-analysis but it is debatable how much we should take her private thoughts into account when looking at her work.

Ingeminate 1965 consists of two over twenty-inch-long, sausage-shaped pieces, which are attached together with surgical tubing. The sausage shapes are bound in string, a practice that Hesse began while making reliefs in Germany. She had started to include in her work items picked up from the floor of her factory studio and this is what took her painting forward towards reliefs. Binding alludes to ideas of protection or mummification, the connotations behind latex as a material – a material used for concealment. Yet also the disintegration of it changes the way it can ‘mummify’ an object. but also to the Surrealist idea of concealed desires. Hesse’s continued use of the technique articulates an almost fetishistic, repetitive process. The work clearly relates to the body with its phallic shaped forms and notion of coupling, sexual material due to its similarities with skin as well as the fetishised use of it. evoking the work of Surrealists such as Hans Bellmer or Man Ray with their images of sexually-charged or bound figures.

Untitled or Not Yet 1966 shows Hesse experimenting with new materials, gravity and concealment, binding the sexually suggestive shapes with cord. The bags have been variously seen as testicular or breast-like, or perhaps evoking placentas or microscopic parts such as lipids and tissues. Hesse was interested in the Surrealist or Dadaist notion of the absurd and of incongruous objects placed next to each to create strange new meanings.

Latex has huge potential as an artist’s material. It can conform to a shape, remain flexible, register an imprint, be translucent or opaque, hard or soft. It can be cast, poured, or painted (liquid latex performs as paint, solidifying into malleable shapes). But ultimately it has a life of its own that surpasses the artist’s intentions. For Hesse this took her practice into a state of unknowing, in creative conflict with a priori decisions. She began making latex sculptures in the autumn of 1967, working intermittently with fibreglass. Unusually, Hesse did not use latex as a casting material, but rather worked with it directly, eliminating the need for making moulds. She experimented with a range of different effects achieved by painting latex onto a range of surfaces, from cheesecloth to wire mesh.

Over the last thirty years, the flexibility of the material has diminished, surfaces have become discoloured and stretched by the pull of gravity. When read against the context of Minimalism, with its dominant aesthetic of hard, industrial surfaces, the quality of disintegration inherent in Hesse’s latex works can be understood as a radical artistic strategy.

Latex works are not designed for longevity as eventually they will completely deteriorate. Beautiful surfaces will become repellent. How important is permanence as a material quality? Erosion of the material – similarities to skin in the life span of it.

 

Materiality of the body

Transparent bra – filled with liquid and use as an experiment. The idea is to make a continuation of the transparent bag, making an item of clothing compared to an accessory. The clothing would be more symbollic in the sense that it changes the human form, protects and shields. Yet wearing an item of clothing which is not only transparent but contains blood (?) is converting the interior to the exterior – revealing physical and emotional vulnerabilities.

UNWANTED CONNOTATIONS – Making a form of clothing that is both transparent and a feminine item intended to be worn by specifically a female is most likely going to create the idea that the work is a feminist statement. Although feminism is subconsciously and consciously used in my work, as well as it being something I am passionate about, its not a subject I want to focus on in these experiments.

The transparent material as a container – what other materials could be used as a container?

Latex – has more of a skin and flesh texture and look – completely water proof

Latex could be fetishised in the same way pain could – this could also be said about the PVC material clothing. Difference between latex and PVC would be the sewn/handmade/not waterproof material compared to a material used around objects to create mould/waterproof.

MAKE SHOES OUT OF LATEX AND FILL WITH LIQUID MATERIAL

shoes in a fetishised form or flesh form?

list of things to do:

• Make transparent bra out of PVC (use halvieg as a model) Look into the idea of converting the interior to the exterior
• make the PVC jacket
• Experiment with latex as a material instead of PVC – working with the materiality of skin more so than the concept of ‘unwanted baggage/trauma’. Experiment by coating objects in latex such as shoes and filling with a material such as blood (LOOK INTO WHERE I WILL GET THE BLOOD FROM)

 

 

materials

Blazer – pride – formal – dignity

MATERIALITY

wax, latex, silicone, plaster, clay, rope – use materials to make moulds

convert the interior to exterior

experiment with clothing – unwanted connotations revolving around feminism, sexism etc.

Lynda Benglis explores latex, rubber, wax etc. – “They’ve all been used on surfaces for human skin. Most of these materials also derive from nature.”

What materials resemble femininity – do I want the work to feel more like its living or as a confined object?

Materiality having a symbolic function – blood

Eva Hesse – latex, fibreglass, plastics “organic vulnerability of the human body itself. Material density.”

“Fluid contours of the organic world of nature, as well as the simplest of artistic gestures”

Hesse’s work is often seen by the viewer as relating to the human body, from the materials. “Materials that hang, draped, slumped, protruded, breast like, penis like, initiated skin, suggested bodily orifices, spilled or just lay on the floor”.

Manipulation of the flesh through materials. Reform my own flesh using materials – wax, rope