Opening on Friday 12 August, Tania Ferrier: Pop Porn explores the representation of women in the commodity culture of the 80s—challenging misogynistic gender ideals, giving voice to feminine authority and prompting deeper reflection on how far, or how little, we’ve come in the last forty years.
A City of Fremantle Art Collection exhibition curated by André Lipscombe and Tania Ferrier, Pop Porn features a survey of the artist’s internationally renowned Angry Underwear project alongside a series of new print works and animated videos created in residency at Fremantle Arts Centre in 2021.
Set against the socio-political climate of the #MeToo movement and the policing of women’s bodies with the over-turning of Roe v Wade, the exhibition builds on Tania’s decades-long feminist practice, offering a contemporary lens on issues including violence against women, consent, safety and beauty, as well as the impact of racial stereotypes in porn and mainstream media.
The exhibition will present nine Angry Underwear sets, bras and underwear featuring shark’s teeth and eyes, created after the artist witnessed the assault of ‘Angel’, a Latino stripper that she got to know while working at the Wild Fyre men’s club in New York in the 80s.
Aiming to call out sexual violence in the workplace, the work is an act of empathy for Tania, acknowledging her own experience of sexual assault in childhood. While the garments were banned by the club management, they later gained media attention when sold from a risqué ‘new wave’ fashion outlet and worn by cultural icons Madonna and Naomi Campbell.
“I am interested in creating art that engages people to contemplate the subject and possibly be awakened,” says Fremantle-based artist Tania Ferrier.
“We come to the Pop Porn exhibition bringing with us our own experiences; the relationship we have to our own bodies, to other’s bodies, our personal histories and our up-bringing. We all see differently. And that is ok.”
Tania’s new print and video series are a product of disassembling 1980’s Playboy centrefolds, in order to reframe her own attention to both the objectification of women’s bodies in mainstream porn and taboos about female sexual desire.
Utilising a surrealist, cut and paste imagery tactic, Pop Porn Calendar Series is comprised of twelve large-scale digital prints featuring scanned and processed collages sourced from original Playboy imagery.
Playboy Collage is a video work featuring a timelapse sequence of moving parts cut out from centrefolds which tumble, twirl and transmute like demi-gods across the screen. The resulting images are powerful and erotic, animating the commanding feminine energy embodied in Tania’s practice.
Presented and curated by the City of Fremantle Art Collection, the largest municipal art collection in Western Australia, Pop Porn typifies the collection’s commitment to presenting contemporary exhibitions which respond to pertinent historical moments.
“Humorous and empowering, Pop Porn prompts us to consider the broader cultural forces around the representations of women; the all-white, domesticised goddesses of the American dream which pervaded popular porn in the 80s, and continue to influence our notions of femininity and sexuality today,” said City of Fremantle Art Collection Curator André Lipscombe.
“By shaking up and subverting mainstream image culture, Tania grants women an active role in reimagining the banal ideals of beauty and desire found in pornography and mass media.”
Accompanying the exhibition is a comprehensive catalogue of texts by writers and artists including Tui Raven, Josephine Wilson, Dr Zoe Sofoulis and Noura Kevorkian, engaging with the themes of feminism, identity and the female body found in the exhibition and their own practices.
Tania Ferrier: Pop Porn opens 6:30pm, Friday 12 August alongside A Gentle Misinterpretation: Australian Artists and Chinoiserie and Jila Kujarra: Two Snakes Dreaming. The exhibitions are then open 10am – 5pm daily until Sunday 23 October.
A series of public programs will run in conjunction with the exhibition, including Artist Talk | Jila Kujarra: Two Snakes Dreaming + Tania Ferrier: Pop Porn on Saturday 13 August, and An Evening with the Collection with Tania Ferrier and invited guests, 6:30pm Thursday 22 September.
For interviews or further information please contact Media Officer Rosamund Brennan via [email protected] or +61 (8) 9432 9565
Image: GoGo Girls, New York, 1991. Image courtesy M. Santo
