Artist research: Frances Phoenix

Frances Phoenix (nee Budden)’s textile-based works remain some of the most appealing and provocative examples of central core imagery. Drawing on housewifely sewing skills the artist loaded the domestic doily with sexual connotations thus confounding the Madonna/whore notion of femininity.  Zips sewn into the centre of the works invited audience participation (if they dared) emphasising the qualities of tactility and spatial intimacy later theorised as characteristics of feminine desire   Phoenix also produced the central core centrefold for the first issue of LIP magazine (1976) and was a founding member of the Women’s Domestic Needlework Group (women’s skills exchange) and the D’oyley Archive. Unfortunately, the archive was destroyed in a warehouse fire in 1985 while negotiations were in process for its sale to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. In conjunction with Marie McMahon, Phoenix curated, coordinated and exhibited in The D’oyley Show (1979). Both artists, who worked as volunteer embroiderers on Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party, were influenced by the feminist needlework historian, Rachel Maines as indicated by the text on the poster ‘Fancywork: the Archaeology of Lives’ which reads , “‘Textiles can provide the kind of social, psychological, political and sexual information that is needed for a structured history of women’s aesthetic thought.’ Rachel Maines.”

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http://www.outskirts.arts.uwa.edu.au/volumes/volume-29/adams-jude-looking-with-in

 

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Artist research: Frances Phoenix

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