A Little Lady Like Tinkling and Smearing

Tamara Marwood, a little ladylike tinkling, 2008 30 October – 29 November
Gallery 2, Craft Victoria

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.