Fine Arts
/ Painting
Jen Broadhurst
As I have developed my practice I have become increasingly influenced by Feminism and Formalism. My work is predominately video-based, with performance as a key element. The videos propose a dialogue between certain ideas and their relationship to art history. These ideas have feminist concerns, such as idealisation, perfection, objectification and neo-maternalism. The videos act as individual investigations into how these ideas have manifested throughout art history.
Currently I am interested in Minimalism and Suprematism, and how their properties might be in conversation with Feminism as a synthesised Abstract-Feminism. The work Birthing Circle attempts this. Through abstraction, the performing female body appears as a large white circle with open-spread legs. The circle rises and falls to mimic breathing and dilation. The performance investigates how the Modernist concepts of reduction, idealisation and utopia can relate to the feminine and contribute to contemporary Feminist discourse.