Statement
Drip explores the perceived guilt associated with the stillness of the female body in the domestic realm, reflecting on the absurdity that women should be anything but still during lockdown periods. Instead, we should be focusing our new ‘free’ time in isolation exercising our bodies and modifying our food consumption, to not only survive the COVID-19 pandemic but to blossom into ‘improved’ physical versions of ourselves as we do so. Drawing from representations of indulgence, excess, and the abject, the female body is framed as yet another absurd homeware in a parody of women’s roles in heteronormative Australia.
Lauren McCartney is a multidisciplinary feminist artist who lives and works in Dharawal Country/Wollongong, New South Wales. Her work parodies objectification and conventions of appropriate female behaviour. She creates situations where her body is humorously exaggerated to the degree that she becomes a spectacle and an object of laughter, whilst simultaneously disrupting stereotypes and myths about femininity and misbehaviour. McCartney’s practice offers the concept that through failing with her materials and her body, she succeeds in creating her work.
McCartney holds a PhD (2018) through Curtin University and a Bachelor of Creative Arts (2010) (Honours Class I) from the University of Wollongong. She has exhibited in galleries and festivals throughout Australia and internationally, including the Naked & Nude Art Prize, Manning Regional Art Gallery, Taree (2021), Perth Centre for Photography, Perth (2020-2021), Art, Not Apart Festival, Canberra (2020), Faux Mo, Mona Foma, Launceston (2020), Feminist Art Festival, Toronto (2020), Cool Change Contemporary, Perth (2019) and Sawtooth ARI, Launceston (2019). She has participated in residency programs including George’s River Council, George’s River (2021), Bundanon Trust, Illaroo (2020) and the Feminist Art Collective Residency, Toronto (2018). McCartney’s work is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia.