Femininity! Sugar, Spice & all things Nice?

Femininity

York’s leading artists turned girly, angry, moody and political, all glammed up and loved up at The ArtSpace in February ’06. Sasha Consiglio the dead-dolly conceptual artist, whose highly emotional work encapsulates the exhibition title of ‘Femininity: Sugar, Spice And All Things Nice?’. Shock-haired Sasha returned to York from temporary southern pastures and so did those controversial coffins that caused such a stink in 2003.

Ails believes Sasha’s dolls set the tone for “a very edgy exhibition”. “It was a very light and dark show, and the engine behind it was Sasha. It was an honour to work with such a young and wildly inventive artist – she’s the Tracey Emin of York!”

Sasha says, “It was great to see the work I spent so much time and emotion on having a breathing space at a proper art studio. I’m grateful to The ArtSpace for promoting my work which, though it is provocative, is totally honest.”

The artists’ brief in ‘Femininity: Sugar, Spice And All Things Nice?’ was to consider what it is to be feminine up north. “We weren’t trying to generalise or pigeon hole anybody,” says Greg ,“We looked at femininity with an open mind and our artists responded in very different ways. We still don’t know what femininity is but it seems to involve interesting themes: fun, defiance, aspirations, frustration.”

Those artistic aspirations came not only from Sasha and Ails, but also from Dexter and his politically charged Girl Power; Rory Motion’s portrayals of feminine fun; Carla Ballantine’s glamorous Sugar Jones collection of cigar-box handbags, Malcolm Ludvigsen’s and Derek Hodgson’s female nudes and Michelle Fletcher’s photos of Action Man and Cindy at home. The exhibition attracted national media attention with The Guardian covering Sasha’s work.

Below is the editorial from The ArtSpace Magazine, issue III, February 2006:

MatriYorkal: Is Eboracum impervious to girlishness?

York rhymes with ‘pork’ (as in male chauvinist pig), or ‘dork’ (male member), or, a la George Bush’s macho pre-Brokeback Mountain Marlborough Man motto, ‘Walk the walk and talk the talk’ (or as he would actually say ‘Walk the dork and bomb the folks, halleluiah’). Yorkies, (it sez ‘ere), are not for girls. To be sure, the place can have something of the Old Boy’s Club about it. There is propriety in its patriarchal architecture and street names. Monkgate. Petergate. Deangate. Davygate. There’s King’s Square, Judge’s Court, Clifford’s Tower. Constantine, the immortal lounge lizard who reclines like a Don Corleone of the Classical world outside York Minster, had his own wife killed. Tourists adore history’s (and herstory’s!) favourite yob hooligans, the Vikings. Whip-ma-whop-ma-gate, with its origins in the bygone practice of whipping wives, would make the most hardcore Taliban mullah blush with shame. The York Walls themselves tighten the city like an ancient stone corset. Yes, York has its fair share of Anglo-Machismo.

The very sight of some of the buildings is heavily macho too. We’re not talking the Minster here, by the way. The Minster is religious and it’s baroque for goodness sake, so it can be excused a bit of Old Testament bombast. No, it’s the buildings directly on the banks of the Ouse that especially bore and sore the eye. Tediously masculine but without the upward thrust of Nelson's column or Big Ben, they’re too bloated even to be thought phallic. Granted, they’re ruggedly reassuring but only in the same way nuclear holocaust bunkers seem like safe havens. These things were definitely designed by men who watched too much sport and watched too many World War II documentaries. We don’t mean that we should paint them pink (the buildings that is, not the men who designed them) – kitsch camp is, like, so overrated. We just want a bit of movement and depth. York’s original town planners, the goddess worshipping Celts, named the area after the Yew trees that helped inspire their intricate art, all ornate coils and writhing rhythm. Celtic art is manifested nowhere on the riverbanks. Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine York’s riverside as anything other than ponderous and serious. Whither the girly flirtatiousness of St Ives and it’s curving white Tate Gallery? Or even Newcastle, that supposed hotbed of beery manliness – their infinitely playful Millennium Bridge makes our Millennium Bridge look vaguely military.

York has got so many feathers in its cap and it’s obvious that its credit is getting better. Needless northern negativity is fading out of fashion: to usher in a future where fun, coffee and intellectual, light-hearted patter rule the roost let’s help York get in touch with its fizzy feminine side. The town planners or the council won’t do it for you. It’s up to you arty people to bring it on.

Greg McGee, 15/02/06