Three Female Artists Hit Back at Gender Stereotypes Through Live Performance

On #InternationalWomensDay, we look back at ‘Wash Your Dirty Linen in Public’, Peterborough’s first exhibition of Live Art by emerging artists.

From 11th February – 2nd March 2016, a young artists network called Emerge presented ‘Wash Your Dirty Linen in Public‘ at City Gallery, Peterborough, which featured socially engaged live performances from Peterborough based artists Gaganpreet Gill Kaur, Charlotte Barlow, and Penelope Harrall. The durational performances saw the three artists in the gallery for up to six hours a day, deconstructing ideas of what it means to be a modern, domestic woman. The artists worked with everyday objects, and City Gallery became a fluid, interchanging space of chutney, tampons, and washing powder.

As well as exploring themes of gender through their own art practices, the artists held a special performance evening in which they invited other female artists to explore gender and domesticity through performance.

Peterborough Poet Laureate, Charley Genever, read poems she had written in response to the title ‘Wash Your Dirty Linen in Public’, and the work of each artist. You can read those poems over on her website. Local musicians, Laurie Fisher and Haleema Naeem, also performed an acoustic set of songs linked to the theme of ‘Home’. The evening was documented by alternative photographer and videographer, Rosie Cooper, and a short film of the exhibition will be released soon.

Here is a snapshot of the ‘Wash Your Dirty Linen in Public’ experience:

Gaganpreet Gill Kaur – Chapatti Wife: Cooks Chutney 2016

Gaganpreet Gill Kaur was born in Hong Kong, China, 1992, and currently lives in Peterborough. Torn between the cultural conflicts within her hybrid identity as an Indo-Chinese British woman, Gaganpreet Gill Kaur addresses the nonrepresentational; the desire of being free from the stereotypes created by society. Find out more about Gaganpreet by clicking here.

Chapatti Wife, an alter ego of Gaganpreet Gill Kaur who is married to cultural expectation, constantly shops, cooks and cleans. She brings an open community kitchen to the gallery, cooking freshly made chutney and chapatti. Inspired by Langar – a free vegetarian feast provided at every Sikh Gurdwara - people from all walks of life are welcome to sit on the floor and eat the same meal together.

Trapped in a laborious routine for the duration of the exhibition, Chapatti Wife becomes a cyborg – something between a human and machine. The host, or servant is referenced by Chapatti Wife’s actions questioning the hierarchy of the server and consumer. Empty jars on the wall await to be filled with chutney from the guests, a display where separate identities become a community systematically controlled by Chapatti Wife. The space is a spice-infused exchange of giving and receiving.

Charlotte Barlow – 5 ft 3 2016

Charlotte Barlow was born in Peterborough, UK, 1992 and currently lives in the city. Her practice dislocates everyday objects – rubber gloves, balloons, quilts – from their familiar form and context. The resulting artworks stand at a metaphoric junction, slipping playfully between sculpture, performance and drawing. Addressing the human material condition in contemporary society, her work has been described as ‘the goo that swirls around our everyday lives.’ Find out more about Charlotte by clicking here.

The building, its horizontals and verticals indicative of a system, is the artist’s own personal space – its dimensions are based on Barlow’s height with windows double her hand-width. She is protected yet held captive by her own physical limitations, ‘white cube’ gallery ideals and house maintenance. Working the average mother’s week of cleaning – 13.15 hours – Barlow laboriously cleans and dirties mounds of washing powder with cleaning equipment such as a dustpan and brush, sponges with water and a vacuum cleaner.

Barlow addresses the cultural status of cleaning, the relationship between freedom and maintenance and gender expectations of domestic housework. She predominately sees the work as a metaphor for current consumerist Western landscape, where the cleanliness of the body is of a higher concern than the cleanliness of the mind. For Barlow, the repetitive nature of her actions with a non-traditional, non-resalable material is a cathartic mentally liberating process in an attempt to escape embedded expectations. The inevitability of the dirty to be cleaned and the clean to be dirtied remains in a never-ending cycle.

Penelope Harrall – My Luxury Item 2016

Penelope Harrall was born in Kings Lynn, UK, in 1994, and currently lives in Surfleet Sea End, Lincolnshire. She aims to scrutinise the objectification we witness everyday in the media and the humiliation we have all felt due to our ’imperfections’. Through video and performance she aims to tackle these integral issues we chose to ignore. Find out more about Penelope by clicking here.

My Luxury Item is aimed at highlighting the disproportionate VAT on sanitary products or more commonly known as ‘The Tampon Tax.’ Prior to the exhibition, Penelope Harrall used 2098 tampons to create a sculptural and wearable dress. Through a laborious unraveling, distorting and stitching process, she concealed the tampon’s original form. In the gallery, Penelope stitches into the dress with blood red thread. The action will signify the beauty of the natural female body, representing the menstrual cycle in contrast to society’s perception of period blood being dirty and unhygienic.

The video on display alongside the performance of live stitching in the gallery, shows the filmed process of the dress’s creation in Harrall’s home. There are threads to the side where the audience, both men and women, are invited to stitch the dress with Penelope and communally join the tampon tax debate.

See the rest of Rosie’s photos of Emerge’s exhibition, ‘Wash Your Dirty Linen in Public’ over on her website.

Gaganpreet, Charlotte, and Penelope were given this opportunity thanks to Peterborough Presents and Vivacity Culture and Leisure. Peterborough Presents is funded by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. One strand of Peterborough Presents is the Emerge Training Programme, which is a six month internship for emerging artists aged under 25 living in/around Peterborough. The aim of the training programme is to equip artists with the skills to become a professional, sustainable artist. To find out more about Emerge, head to their Facebook page, or click on the Peterborough Presents tab at the top of this browser.