LAUREN REA
The Simon Lee Gallery - MAI-THU PERRET: ZONE
‘zone’ (2016)
‘Les guérillères XII’ (2016)
‘on the coral pillow two streams of tears half longing for you, half resenting you’ (2016)
There is an almost alter-like fountain called “Zone” at the heart of the exhibition to create a sense of the performative and an air of the ritualistic.This sculpture is a large cube covered in hand-made white ceramic tiles, a pipe with water trickling out onto a rough sandy grit on the top. There are clear references to Hammam architecture, which is is the Islamic variant of the Roman bath or saunas, as well as having clear links to minimalist sculpture, such as Carl Andre’s "Equivalent VIII” and his influence within Modernism and Minimalism. This work considers how our bodies are housed by architecture, our relationship with space and how in many ways, our bodies are architecture, ever changing and transitory.
animation to create a place between movement and immobility. The materials also lent to reflecting the identity of the anonymous mannequin, tying links to the turbulent nature of Dadaism after the chaos of the First World War. Contextually, this piece deals with the stereotypes of violence, female roles in countries where women have more traditional roles, dealing with themes of identity, independence and feminism surrounding women. Les Guérillères XII is purposefully composed to be by the door, as though a guard over the exhibition. My research also displays a direct reference to Wittig’s text ‘Les Guérillères’, 1969, inspired by soldiers in the YPJ, a female-only Kurdish militia currently fighting in the Syrian civil war.
This piece was a body collaged from papier-mâché, found clothes and feet of bronze with a face that resembles that of a mannequin or marionette, reminiscent of Chirico’s ‘Troubadour’, 1940 - Suggesting a sense of an
This piece is a ceramic wall hanging that was then imprinted into with hands and the gestures that they made. Perret shows an interest in the process of how soft and malleable clay is transformed by fire into a hard, impermeable surface. This piece also follows some themes of Dadaism, by way of their disruption of treating materials in an unprecedented technique whilst combining inconsistent elements or materials. Black
paint creates a more minimalist style, highlighting the loss of control. Ceramics is a raw material that could suggest a sense of the emotions that could be influenced. Abstraction creates a sense of rejection of the corporeal, displaying a process, a dialogue through body language , ever changing and transitory.
The Simon Lee Gallery was showing Mai–Thu Perret' Exhibition when we went to London. She is known to creates interdisciplinary work that combine the languages of feminism, politics, , nature and religion.
The exhibition is based on Perret’s own fictional narrative The Crystal Frontier, which has been in the process of being written since 1999, following a group of women who attempt to escape capitalism and patriarchal convention. Perret also took inspiration from writer and feminist theorist Monique Wittig’s novel and her novel Les Guérillères (first published in 1969) that imagines a society run by a tribe of warrior lesbian women...