A Thousand Tiny Pricks
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A Thousand Tiny Pricks
from the Things Men Have Said To Me Instead Of Hello collection
Acrylic paint, felt, and safety pins on vintage canvas, framed in gilded wood and plaster.
Things Men Have Said To Me Instead Of Hello
I go into detail about what this collection is all about on the collection overview page, but if you haven’t seen that you can read the description in the accordion below - click the + sign.
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If you have spent any time in my company over the last six to eight months, you will have heard me talk about my latest collection, Things Men Have Said To Me Instead Of Hello.
The collection comprises 10 pieces inspired by things actual men said to me instead of hello during a period of online dating in my mid-thirties. I took screenshots of the most heinous, graphic, and creepy openers and, although at the time I wasn’t sure what I was saving them for, the idea for this collection arrived a few years later.
The purpose of bringing these ‘greetings’ (if you can call them that) into the light is not to demonise men, and paint them as predatory monsters in contrast to the delicate saintliness of women eyeroll. It’s to open the floor for discussions about the patriarchal waters we are all swimming in, perpetuate, and, to a greater or lesser degree, are complicit in.
I want to provoke discussions about rape culture, the male gaze, beauty standards etc etc, and explore all the ways in which we all benefit or are hindered by the status quo. Most importantly, I want you to join me in the horrified realisation of how NORMAL we’ve made all of these things.
When I’ve told people about this collection, the responses from women and men are vastly different. The women know immediately what I’m referring to, and usually respond with some related (horror) story, delivered in the blasé manner of someone who has been dealing with this shit her whole life (because she has).
The men on the other hand, range from absolutely horrified, to knowing stuff like this happens but only in an abstract kinda way, to (on one memorable occasion) asking me if any of the ‘Men’ I’m referring to have ever mentioned my “great tits” - I kid you not.
I’m not going to go into all of the ways that the patriarchy is a problem for men as much as it is a problem for women (and I’m aware that I’m leaning into the gender binary here for simplicity’s sake, but really it’s a problem for ALL of us), but suffice to say that we can’t make things better unless we can see, identify, and name the problem.
This collection is my contribution to bringing these open secrets into the light.
A Thousand Tiny Pricks
The delightful ‘greeting’ immortalised in this piece is just the word ‘slut’.
I mean, wow. There’s not much I can really say about this except wonder what the thinking behind it was.
Was he just blowing off some steam? Did he confuse me with someone else? Is this negging? If so, does it work? Who knows?
Or is it a command? It’s imperative. Is this man demanding that I slut for him?
Also, let’s not forget the inherent double standard at work here. A woman is a ‘slut’. She’s ‘loose’, ‘easy’, a ‘tramp’, a ‘nymphomaniac’, ‘asking for it’, etc etc. And men of course, are ‘players’, ‘studs’, a ‘Casanova’, because ‘boys will be boys’.
The title of this piece - A Thousand Tiny Pricks - is a quadruple entendre (!).
Firstly, it speaks to the physical punctures made by the safety pins pushing through felt. Secondly, it reminds us of the cumulative damage of constant acts of aggression, both major and minor. Thirdly, it’s a jab at the men who say these things. And, finally, it’s the implication of what gets you labelled a ‘slut’.
I constructed the letters out of soft, pink felt - a material that feels so feminine in its softness and pinkness and its associations with craft and ‘female’ pastimes - penetrated by dozens of tiny gold safety pins.
The systematic piercing of this feminine surface with the hard, pointed metal of the pins speaks to the violence of having one’s entire identity reduced to sexual availability. It’s a death by a thousand cuts.
These are fixed to a canvas resplendent with colour - crimsons, magentas, ochres, and electric jade green. This piece is about refusing the shame that patriarchal society attempts to impose, and so I chose colours that sing and celebrate, that demand attention, that refuse to be cowed.
I wanted the background to feel organic and fluid - almost ‘sloppy’, with the paint applied in liquidy splodges and splatters that often escape the confines of the picture plane, encroaching onto the frame.
The frame, of course, is another example of the heavy gilt I’ve used throughout this collection. The gold elevating the words of men, even when those words are crass, vulgar, and unwanted.
And, like the decrepit frame used for Jailbait, this one is also cracked and chipped and fucked up. Because this bullshit is old and tired - we’re so over it.
See the rest of the pieces in this collection below.
