Monash University Museum of Art’s 2014 Ian Potter Sculpture Court commission.

(…excerpt from catalogue) “The Weeping Women make up a group of public sculptures that are deeply informed by the artist’s feminist perspective. They engage in a dialogue with the history of modern art and make a concerted effort to subvert the forms, materials and techniques that are typically associated with canonical male artists’ works. In Weeping Women, the female body is extolled as a life-giving force: alternately adopting birthing postures and referencing the Aztec goddess of purification Tlazolteotl or Ixcuina. Rather than being portrayed as a “tortured” muse, as Dora Maar was in Picasso’s renowned Weeping Woman of 1937, the female in Mestrom’s work is figured as self-possessed and nurturing. Not only does she lactate, with breasts as fountains, her soft curved forms invite passers-by to gather around her – to sit and lay on her body. Mestrom’s sculptures are intended to arrest viewers, even cause them to double-take, precisely because they deviate from the male-dominated history of public sculptures.”

MUMA Project overview
MUMA Catalogue
Landscape Architects Australia Review Feb 2016
Blackmail Offline Visual Essay with images by Sean Fennesy

   

 

All black and white photography by Sean Fennesy