These supermarket and butchers sausages are made from stuffed Shapewear. They were a response to the brief of making artwork from declassified, redundant, taken-out-of-service Shapewear items.
I curated this project too, and it was called Decomissioning Shapewear for The Feminist Times, responding to the editor, Charlotte Raven’s title. This kind of underwear is usually deployed to ‘correct’ the silhouette of a body, according to the shape the current aesthetics and judgements of the time and fashion. But here is was cut up, photographed, animated, stitched, burnt and reformed.
The group of artists included Giuliana Molinari, who made sculptural sugar coated pants. Victoria Harwood Kapadia animated courting, glossy shapewear slugs, Tim Copsey and Vanda Battye’s work was made and swung on the shores of the West Coast of Scotland. Abigail Norris Boyd make an apple and pear shape fruits. Charlotte Raven burned a bra in her true style, liking proximity to hazards. Suky Best photographed herself in a stuffed bra. Cecilie Telle crocheted hanging baskets ready for planting. Jacky Parsons made egg cosy covers.
The pieces featured in the online Feminist Times magazine.
Lucy Newman | Visual artist, UK 