After completing my degree I was exhausted. The duration of 2008 had been spent exploring a series in self-portraiture and I had confronted myself on many different levels. I had examined a lot of photos of me that I didn’t like, and began to question myself as to why I had such strong negative reactions to some of these photos. I decided to take these on and explore them in my artistic practice.

The ‘Bath’ image for example, was taken from a small series of photographs that Gene took of me earlier 2008. I can’t remember the exact circumstance of the night before but I know that at the time of the photo I was in a bath, hungover and very sad. When I saw the photo I was both angry and upset. I hated it. Gene loved it and he even did a tracing of it in Illustrator, however I still hated it.

2008 saw me go through some massive changes personally. It was one of the first times in my life that I felt very alone; my social networks had broken down and even though I had a loving partner, life was pretty tough without the support of my friends. In this year I faced a lot of bullying and manipulation from my social groups. It was pretty distressing and I didn’t act as the person I would have liked to. I am ashamed of some of the things I said and did, however hindsight has allowed me to understand why I reacted in this way.

I have always had strong female figures throughout my life . Strong in a way that has been of detriment to my own growth. I have always been dominated and manipulated by these women. As I grew up I began to realize that these people where not really looking out for me so we parted ways, however I have still repeated this pattern. Even to the extent of letting people I am not close to get quite a hold on me. I have allowed myself to feel inferior to some of the most insignificant people I have come across, but I am working on changing all of that.

“Me, Myself” is the first piece that I began and finished after relocating to Berlin. I was trying very hard to get the creative ball rolling again. I struggled a lot as I was in a country where I knew nobody, couldn’t really speak the language and was really missing certain people back in Melbourne. When I get stuck creatively, it feels like the end of the world to me. I become a mess. I am only now learning to avoid this by writing and getting on with life.

This piece is about my shadow self. She has kept all the negativity that I have felt towards myself, combined with other people’s words and my own voice. She is the ultimate mocker! The figure looking directly at the viewer is me directed at me. It gives me an opportunity to take a good hard look at myself, and to take note of what it is, that I do to myself.

I can’t answer for every image I draw. I don’t analyze my work to a point where I cripple myself and just talk rather than draw. However I think this new image needs some explanation. There is a series forming amongst the portraits of people looking crazy/disturbed, (however you like to put it). The subject of the series is a female figure, almost contorted, sometimes repetitive, but always a similar figure. Images from this series have been banned from myspace and from a gig as they are deemed too offensive. When I compare my works to other available images on myspace I think that what separates mine from the unbanned material is the pubic hair.

When I proposed the idea of this particular drawing, “Touchy Subject”, some of the response suggested that I was engaging in a work that would be considered ‘pornographic’. There is a distinctive difference between pornography, and sexuality. Pornography, and art. Pornography, and my drawings exploring the female form and female sexuality.

Female sexuality is still a touchy subject. There are still woman out there my age who are uninformed about their body-parts, let alone what they are for or what to do with them.

When I was a young, sexually active girl I had a few problems with my vagina and went to the doctors. The problem was of course that I had washed myself so much with soap that I actually had hurt myself. The doctor told me that woman don’t need to use soap on their genitals and that in fact it could cause many health problems. She also told me a story about another girl who used to wash herself with the antiseptic ‘Dettol’. Why do we think that we are so unclean? So dirty? Why are we not taught about the difference between the vagina and the clitoris? Why are we so unwilling to teach our children about their own bodies? Of course there is the bigger picture; I know that there are woman are in far worse circumstances than most of us in the West. But if we are so advanced why are there girls out there who don’t know how to take care of their own bodies? Why are there girls out there who don’t know what their bodies do? Is it so scary to let girls know that their bodies can be pleasurable? Ridiculous. What century are we in again?

UPDATE:

Within hours of adding this image to the gallery of my facebook fan page it has been taken down.