THE BARBIE THEME

I have now decided on my final theme which is the burning of three dresses that for me symbolise the punishing and unfair gender expectations traditionally paced on a woman. I am still working and developing ideas using Barbie as a metaphor and I have been really happy with the work I have done so far but I feel that there is so much potential there for me to explore, she will be an ongoing theme and for this module I am excited with my burning project. However, when I first started exploring how I could find a way to use Barbie as a representation of how women have been trapped by societal gender expectations I did not expect for one of my research freezing tests to turn out to be the embodiment of this. When I was defrosting a Barbie head that I had frozen in a block, I noticed a trapped air bubble that looked like ‘tear’ in the ice. It felt almost perfect that there should be a frozen tear and the clouding in the ice semi obscured her face that seemed to wipe away her usual happy-go-lucky smile and beneath it I see a sad look of longing. It also reminded me of the Glass Tears photo by ManRay.

I have made a A3 print of this image and I will hang it in the exhibition.

FINAL PROJECT – Burning Experiments

I experimented with burning wood and how I could keep it alight with long, curling flames. I tried a variety of fuels: paraffin, gel fire lighting fluid. It was much harder than I thought, trying to get orange flames on the entire piece for any length of time.

Frame for the burning

Elder is also a tree of regeneration and fullfilment. In myth, Fairies are said to have a fondness for this wood. English folklore says you must ask the spirit of the elder tree for permission before cutting down any of its wood. With this knowledge, it felt important to only use fallen or already broken branches for this frame. This proved difficult to find all three necessary pieces so I used a piece of Hazel as well. According to Celtic mythology, a hazel tree, was the first creation on Earth.  The first Irish hazel tree, which grew upon the Well of Wisdom, was said to have held all the knowledge of the universe within its branches.

It was a suprise to me that the gathering of the wood and understanding the symbolism of the tree became very important to me an the project.

DRESSES HANGING ON THE FRAME

The washing line feels very symbolic. Every image i can think of from movies, tv, illustrations, photographs and paintings are of women hanging out the washing, occasionally with young children playing but always a woman. I was interested to see where the expression hanging out to dry came from

When I saw the dresses hanging on the frame it made me think of the phrase “Hanging out to dry” which means to abandon or desert someone who is in trouble or to allow someone else to take all the blame for a situation that does not turn out well. I immediately thought of the women in Paula Rego’s Abortion Pastels that I referenced in the previous section. The phrase carries a connotation of helplessness, like clothes pinned to a line and at the mercy of the sunshine and wind. It really resonated with me an the project .

FIRST BURNING

Firstly I prepared and made sure I had the right safety equipment!

I did a ‘test run’ burning as I had no idea how the wood and dresses would burn and how quickly etc. I also wanted to evaluate the safety aspect so i knew that I would be going in and out of camera frame whilst recording the event as I wanted to try using different types of fuel (bbq fluid, paraffin, bio-ethanol) to assess what burned best and which one produced the best orange curling flames for the longest time and in order to do this, I needed to add these different fuels bit by bit.

I tied the dresses to the elder wood frame. Seeing them change with the fading light and flutter in the evening breeze made them feel alive. I wondered if I should burn them at all as they looked strangely magnificent. I felt as if they were lined up knowing they were facing certain death but they held themselves with grace knowing they were to be freed.

As I was planning on filming this when it got dark, I took a small torch with me. As the light faded I tested out the torch and to my suprise it had a red setting, presumably for a hazard signal if your’e in the car. I shone the torch on the white dresses and they turned pink. This pink seemed to intensify as the sky got darker. The resulting images turned out really well.

SECOND and FINAL BURNING

From the first burning attempt, I learned much about the practical aspects of getting the frame to burn evenly and the dresses to burn much more slowly than they had on the first try when I had doused them in lighter fluid. This time I soaked hessian rope in paraffin and wound it all around the frame. This was very successful in causing the frame to burn all over with a similar intensity.