the perfect woman
In The Perfect Woman Susan
O’Doherty explores her fascination
with female identity. Pinioned on
refashioned wooden boards, each
figure is a proud display and a
specimen, laid out for investigation.
Put together from remnants of our
manufactured world, these creatures
are grotesque hybrids. Furniture
parts, obsolete home appliances
and decorations form their bodies,
arranged with an eye to functionality.
The handle of a grinder recalls an
arm, window sashes are limbs;
an elegant, hand-turned table leg
becomes a torso. At the centre
of many, unlocking their secrets,
are old-fashioned keyholes, set in
metal doorplates – a comic book
eroticism.
The mounting boards are
assembled from recycled wood,
painted and patched to form
internal landscapes. Treated with
O’Doherty’s characteristic high key
palette, they blend with the patina of
the untreated objects. Chalky, gentle
hues give the works, you could
almost say – beauty....
Enhanced, improved, reconstructed,
The Perfect Woman holds up
a distorting mirror to the social
constructs that pretend to tell us
what is feminine, what is attractive,
what is possible.
Elizabeth Butel, 2010
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