Dummy: a model or replica of a human being. an object designed to resemble and serve as a substitute for the real. a stupid person. a person who cannot speak.
Charcoal, ink, emulsion on Fabriano. These 5ft x 4ft drawings were made during a 2 week residency in the glass fronted project space at METAL which a gives on to a busy public park. There was an intensity to their making because throughout my time there people were watching whether I was drawing, thinking or just drinking tea. Alongside my work I too was on show, which activated the usual private studio into a performative space and blurred the boundaries of public and private.
There’s some kind of struggle being played out between the two protagonists the ‘live’ woman/dancer who’s dressed to party and the human-object dummy (a mindless plaything?) …’the interaction between the inert mannequin with its suggestively animate presence and the living figure. The dummy seems to reflect back on the viewer the folly and fallibility of the human condition ‘silently compliant’ lifelike yet lifeless, realistic yet incurably unreal’. (Jane Monroe ‘Silent Partners’ Yale University Press 2015 )
Theirs is an intense and complex relationship: ‘We are in the era of the substitute ‘everything that is uncanny that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light’ (Jane Munro)