Heidi Holmes
Control yourself (even if you feel dead inside, hurt and barren) (Installation View)
2016
Pressed glasshouse-grown pink hydrangeas, pins, the distance between the artist's vagina and the earth, Taubmans Silver Smoke matte paint, Freedom vase, baby-powder fragrance oil. In the bathroom; Installation sounds, lyrics to The Rose by Bette Midler, Xerox Lilac A4 80gsm, glass bowl, pressed glasshouse-grown pink hydrangeas.
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Why does tragedy exist?
Because you are full of rage.
Why are you full of rage?
Because you are full of grief.
-Anne Carson
Here is the thick of it; with purple mucus in rare June, walk around the gallery and notice the mass of pressed hydrangeas pinned to the wall, breathe in baby oil, get it in your lungs. You are anointed. It is oily in here, not wet or moisture wicking, all laid flat to dry, and a dry show it is. One day, you were born, that was long ago. Periphery vision becomes swamped in lilac. We are meant to see flowers, flowers all around – instead there are meticulous, (with lumbar puncture accuracy) thin silver metal pins that pierce each flower to the wall. People nearby say, ‘think of the hours this took,’ ‘consider the labour!’ In the bathroom, lyrics to The Rose by Bette Midler are printed onto the mirror, of course, flinch at your own self image. Art making is so fucking humiliating. Seeds and flowers and carefully painted walls indicate a care to orchestrate an introduction to what is not present - life. The room is stifled, the baby oil smell makes me nauseous. Two glass vessels are filled with dead dehydrated plant matter. A lecturer at art school says, ‘stop reading that feminist Sontag rubbish, you’re wasting your time’. Your trauma is not my trauma. Life, Kafka says, is theatre. Matte paint named silver smoke, fragrance oil, petals, glass, metal, are all materials for work that is both emotional in its materiality (the pressed flower) and feminine looking, would this acerbic work taste of methylated spirits? I make a guess, I make a guess. It is always comforting to assume there is a secret behind whatever torments you, and the work in this show reads light, bright, airy, but sinks upon breaking the surface. For a show so gentle on the eye it speaks in punitive terms.
Writing by Beth Caird
From the exhibition, Control yourself (even if you feel dead inside, hurt and barren) in 2016, at Kings Artist Run, Melbourne, Australia.
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Notes:
The room is scented with baby powder. It is sickly and pungent.
40,000 glasshouse-grown pink hydrangeas have been dried and pressed and pinned to the gallery wall.
The flowers have been installed in a way that represents domestic decoration – something like a half-wall of wallpaper.
The lower section of wall has been painted in the colour of my parent’s bedroom when I was a child.
The height of the painting of the lower wall is also the height at which my vagina is from the earth.
In the bathroom of the gallery is a hidden audio system playing the sound of the pins being hammered into the gallery wall. Also intermittently playing is an audio track of me singing (and crying), The Rose by Bette Midler. This is a song that I sang with my friends in our high school choir.