Objects: The Veil, The witches hat and the spoons.

 used a test veil to put cyanotype mix on but it doesn't hold. Rinses out and I'm not convinced i can spray it with anything that will make it hold

 

cathedral veil will be the same - do i sew different fabric to the bottom of the veil?

have a large square base for the display -talked fixtures will Mally - sticking with screws and nails for items on the wall.

The hat - considered too representative of witch - angry feminist perspective - stereotypes. 

I wanted to include the witches' hat as a standalone object that could be interacted with by an audience but conceded that it would be disjointed curated in this way. I had a hunch of what I was trying to achieve but the reading may have been specifically around the witch as a stereotype.  I wanted the hat to be a vehicle to represent the change from independent women to isolated women.

This is my thinking when challenged about how to curate the witches hat - in the original proposal i was going to supsend it to encourage audience engagement but it didn;t sit with the rest of the body of work.

The witch is the anchor point of my research and feeds directly into the discourse that I explore. Without the hat, the focus of the exhibition falls to the tradwife alongside the Venus; this speaks of domesticity but removes something that I want to acknowledge. The tradwife features in this body of work because she is contemporary resurgence of patriarchal marriage, but she is not the crucial connection that I want to make with the work. 

Crit -suggestion to add pagan flowers / cinaman sticks - i feel this then reads of a stereotypical pagan witch - i'm looking for a way to display the hat as an object - in a way that it doesn't read of halloween, stereotypical tropes or anger - 

Tried the veil in the space on the plinth - and added the witches hat to the top to merge the 2 female pieces of headwear - they're the same thing in terms of female control mechanisms.

Softer way to display - clashes with the idea of the witch

Will practice sewing words into the test veil to see how easy it is to do this- how does it read and if i want it in a section in the middle or around the bottom curve -like lace.

Thinking pale thread would imitate lace but would hold the text..

Staples hold the veil in place -hat is secured by a clip to a nail -currently..

 

I wasn't sure about the space between the wall and the plinth but it does allow the audience to get between the veil to look at the hat more closely.

The witches hat isn't something for the audience to engage with and you have to look to recognise it as a hat. 

 

Tested the painting in the same space.

Tested the veil from the wall instead of the corner - 

 

tucked the point of the hat in to avoid the plague mask connotations but i think its better with this visible or the hat looks like a circle. 

Considered the width of the veil - but it hangs like a veil from a person like this. 

I may make it more taught - but also wonder if this makes it too structured - i want people to stumble on the writing,

Veil higher?

does this make it something else (not a wearable height)

Do i put a light in there ? 

Testing the size of the font at the bottom of the veil - conversation around what kind of font.

 

I asked my mum to help to sew the text into the veil but time didn't allow so i tested enamel paint over the taught material. This was really difficult to do and smeared really easily so I painted the text directly onto the plinth base.