It's not far from where I live, but I had never been to the V&A's Museum of Childhood before now. Crazy, huh. 
Anyway, last week I finally went to check out two shows I'd heard mentioned: Afro Supa Hero and Confiscated Cabinet
If I'm honest, the building itself shocked me a bit. And reminded me of a starker version of the Pitt Rivers Museum (which is a weird museum - another story). It was all open and noisy. I don't know why, but I was expecting more of a library, journey-type museum, rather than an (admittedly, gorgeous) open hall and with massive ceilings and balconies around the outside. 
I was also hungry at the time, so some of these opinions may be slightly skewed.

Afro Supa Hero - Jon Daniels




I loved the underlying idea behind Afro Supa Hero. I loved seeing the comics from the 1960s onwards -  I wished I could have read some of them there. I'm not even into comics that much, but there were some seemingly great action stories and ace history-based ones I wanted to peer into (especially the one about Harriet Tubman).
But the historical journey of Afro action figures and heroes was the really interesting bit. It was a relief to see a shift from their names being 'Black XYZ' to just XYZ. That's polite of everyone.
Some of the renditions of famous black characters into toys was embarrassing - you could compare the printed image on the box to the way they'd been rendered in 3D and you could tell sometimes it was just like - "eh, we'll just make White Lady Action Figure into darker skin and it'll be fine!" Cringe.  

I learned that Jean-Michel Basqiat and Lee 'Scratch' Perry have action figures!! Which is pretty rad, although i never really played with dolls (cough) and ona selfish level, I was a bit bummed that Frozone  from the Incredibles wasn't in there. But maybe he's missing for a reason. Like licensing blah blah. 
(Or maybe Jon Daniels doesn't like Frozone?)

At the end of the historical/collectible action figures was Jon Daniels' own super hero design.
And it was fly - matching mega afros, the earrings matching the goatie? red, yellow, green and black colours of africa? Loved it. 
There were mock-ups and lego versions, although I really want to see them in production. Surely Momiji dolls need a new range. I would have bought some Afro Super Hero dolls, for sure.
Well, I say that, but I couldn't afford to buy one of the cute mugs on sale, so who am I kidding ( I would like to think that the money went to Daniels himself and not back into the V&A merch pot)

But what Daniels' show highlighted, of course, was the limitations of scope in action figures and super heroes and how that perpetuates the limitation of scope of human beings. Especially human beings of colour, starting from the beginning. In childhood.

Super important issue to tackle.
And, here's where I add to the problem: I wanted to draw even more out of that show. 
I wanted to extend it into a whole show about race and childhood and toys. 
Like, looking at the Mamie Clark research from the 1960s on the colour dolls and how she changed the way race and childhood imagery was understood; it has had an influence in psychology, cultural studies, art and image-making and of course education. 

And i could totally imagine a wider scope that takes those ideas, includes the excellent ones from Daniels' work and extends even further - including makie dolls, brats, barbie, home-made toys/dolls from non-western cultures, etc.
And I wanted to see more, not because I'm culturally greedy (although there is that), but because the influence toys/dolls have on us as adults is pretty massive.  With them we learn to play, to associate, development of identity, understandings about our body and the abstraction of the internal experience to a external object in identification, and boil down our expansive selves into these very particular objects.
It would become a museum show about the history of where limitation starts. The history of where adults decide how small a box they can squeeze future adults into, in order to get the best possible outcome for current adults.
Wouldn't THAT be a cool show to see?

And speaking of home-made toys/dolls, 
These cabinets of confiscation were fascinating: A collection of toys/weapons/objects that have been confiscated from school children over the last 30 years.

hand-written notes, those paper-based things girls play with, knifes, flame throwers, stones, playing cards, chewing gum, etc.
It was organised according to 'age' and 'gender'. Two cabinets each for girls, two for boys. Two for lower grades and two for higher grades.
That sorting in itself intrigued me. 
Yes, there are obvious links between boys and girls of similar ages. But i think it also would be interesting to make the cabinets sortable in different ways. 
Like, actual age - see what all 9-year olds hide. 
Or chronology - all the things confiscated in 1991, or 2007. 
Maybe even by kind of school - what do grammar school kids bring and what do comprehensive kids bring?
But, back to the display at hand, it was enlightening for me, as a woman (who was previously a girl at a catholic primary and single-sex private highschool) to see what was gendered. 
So it wasn't just in my school, but girls really do use words as weapons. And vanity is a weakness (one conditioned, I argue). So much make up, cruel notes and there was a chewing gum/hair attack sample in there that was simultaneously gross and a reminder of the nature of our attack/defence tactics: long-lasting and shame-based.
Boys? Garden-variety violence. I knew it, but the image of some of the sticks and metal rods brought to highschools still made me go a little weak at the knees. How the hell you're supposed to cultivate nuanced social interaction when that's a threat, I have no idea. And the fact that men grow up to be sensitive at all? Bravo. Hats off to the sensitive ones!
I do wish shows like both of these could be seen and talked about more. Especially because, given that we all have childhoods and those become our adulthoods and the society at large, it's amazing that more people aren't fascinated with the history of the small but constant ways in which we really belittle ourselves as humans.
I know, clear reminders of painful history and the failings of the human condition is not traditionally a thing that we enjoy pondering over on a wet sunday (except if you're in a cinema), but I think I would like them to be.

Perhaps if we could see these childhoods in museums, in an abstract way, and how they project forward, we might be better able to make decisions about our own adulthoods, or any childhoods we may be in the business of influencing right now.


Deets:
Afro Super Hero
14 September 2013 - 9 February 2014

Confiscation Cabinets 
9 November 2013 - 1 June 2014

At V&A Museum of Childhood
Cambridge Heath Rd, London E29PA

images pinched from the V&A Museum of Childhood site.

xav is an artist in london, who i first met when i was chained up in a box as part of my performance space residency.

he's made this artwork/video response to the question he posed on you tube: what do you want from girls?




i could find it depressing, or aggravating. but i'm don't.
i'm sad. i know that's not how all young guys think. and the system has fucked those dudes up.

i'm also kind of relieved, because it's not just me that is seeing this trend happening up close and personal.

but it gives clarity to actively supporting young women getting educated.

if guys (like that) start finding it harder to get with an uneducated, poor, low-self-esteem, don't-talk-back, girl-as-pet and see that their cum is drying up? they'll adapt.

Chicken knickers instead of Baggy Pussy.


This was originally a post about Lily Allen's Hard Out Here. But, well, who needs yet another mouthy white woman's opinion on the subject, really.*

So i'm going to do what i do better - write about art.

Specifically about two recent exhibitions speak with a little more nuance about some of the issues that Ms Allen was trying to portray in that racist piece of shit video. Oops? did i really say that.

Anyway, back to it: Sarah Lucas and Kehinde Wiley.


Sarah Lucas at the Whitechapel.

…and it's all about bitches. the images and the violence, the tawdriness of the same-ol-same-ol images of women's bodies, men's bodies - the same blah blah bullshit we're all just a little bit sick of seeing. well, maybe you're not sick of seeing. But I am. Friends of mine are. In fact, my first visit to the show was with a friend who is battling depression because of the hatred she has about her body because it doesn't 'fit' with what 'should'.

Anyway, it's there in the gallery. Just there. In all kinds of detail. with varying levels of humour, finesse, mess and message.

And it's refreshingly unsimplifed. it's all over the place.
It is probably comparitively 'sanitised' for the viewing public, but even with that in mind, it's not a perpetuation of the 'good girl' imagery. But neither is it so erratic that there isn't plenty of room to read some her messages about images of women. About the control of our own image. And who has it.

OK i have to say it. I think this image (i pinched) says some of what ms allen WAS trying to get at, with a whole lot finer detail. It is hard being that bitch.





And, having said that, Sarah Lucas is a white, middle class woman who presents a fairly singular image of woman. But for that, it's relentless. And it's consistent. She portrays the violence of gender symbolism, makes fun of the entendre - the guardsman of language - and rides it like she's going to come any second. She is unabashed.

The variety of materials is also refreshing: she's got sculptures, readymades, drawings, wallpapers, prints, mechanical wanking cocks (a material type all of its own), photography and text. And on that front, it's not singular.

It was a relief to see the savageness of her responding to the same old sexist bullshit about the female form.

Personally (currently up to my back teeth with it all), it is an exhibition which says 'it's ok honey, i feel the same way). But she's far more humourous about it. Me? i'm back on some adolescent angst, writing about it in my blog diary.

The work bursts its flow through the whole show, too. There's not enough space to spread out, and because of that, make plans to see the show twice.

I don't think the antidote is to give more space. I think the slightly-claustrophobic feeling of the show perfectly demonstrates a) the intensity of being an artist: you have a thousand things on the go at the one time and there's no space from it. You can't walk back from your life. b) same thing about being a woman. Your imagery and the intensity is relentless, there isn't a break from it. You don't get to take a 10minute breather, walk back and see how it feels to not have all of the 'requirements' and 'opinions' and 'representation' in your face. So why should you in an art gallery?


Kehinde Wiley at Stephen Friedman Gallery

The first time i saw Kehinde Wiley's work was in his Black Light book at the deutsche guggenheim in berlin. (note the caption: i still REALLY want this book.) it was €20 or something stupid cheap and i still couldn't afford it. and couldn't justify buying books when i could barely afford to eat. anyway, i'm a fan.


The show at Stephen Friedman gallery last month was his work from Jamaica. Floral, Patterned and Beautiful, Part of his ongoing series from around the world - especially places that have significance for (young male) figures unseen in the former colonies: Israel, Africa, Brazil.

This is one of my favourite: all pattern everything.



I love the OTT of it all. Yes, posed staring out in a fairly straight-up pose, but bursting with life and colour and yowsers!

Unlike previous works of his and other shows I'd heard about/seen, this show included the ladies. In fact, the gallery at #11 was all Ladies. Three large works of larger-than-life ladies, showing off their thang. I don't remember ever seeing a woman portrayed by Wiley like that - notoriously focused on the young men until now.

And, despite the regal/papal titles sometimes given to these women - or the grand floral treatment, the underlying message that comes with these paintings is that 'this is not their life'. These women are street. they are not 'portrait sitters', like the subjects Wiley refers to in his video

They are the 'bitches' in allen's song. The ones who she will never be and has never been. These are the women for who it is fuckin' hard. Oops - i went there again.


Again, the images are seriously beautiful. And they had me, as a 30-something educated white woman staring at the ornate, decorated images of young black men. hmm

This was the difficult part about the show for me, and the subject of a long chat with the gallery staff. (which i'm very glad that they were willing to have the discussion. they didn't, to their credit, ignore the obvious racial and ethical place of art/paintings/objects/viewers in what they're selling, and hide behind the 'it's just paintins, miss'.)

So, this age-old dynamic. me: western, privileged white appreciator of young, gorgeous black specimen. Not that's how I personally believed I was viewing these images, and these people, but I cannot ignore the echoes and the dynamic that had been set up. Into which i had walked and cannot avoid because of the fact that I am most of those things. Depressing.

The gorgeous patterns, the refreshingly different images of men and women surrounded by colours and framing reserved for the white elite - they're amazing and I love them. but if *I* take one home and stick it on my wall, am I not the same as the old anthopological doyenne with her specimens of 'the noble savage?'.

Argh! the mobius strip questioning of 'for whom is this art made?' 'who has the power?' drove me a bit bonkers. But in a way that I value: Is kehinde selling out young black street stylers, his own peeps, for the fodder of white folks, again. Or is he taking back that role of representing the young black gorgeous man into the hands of young black gorgeous man and the privilege white folks just get to watch, whilst they get to be immortalised. Or something of both. Or neither.

I left the show with all those complex feelings of wanting to take a shower, to dance in joy, to sleep with the next gorgeous man i saw, all desire and need to turn off all the images in my day to ignore how annoyingly complex and shit human power and relationships are.

Instead I wrote about it in my blog diary.




*here are a few excellent responses to that video:

- Deanna Rodger, poet wrote and performed a piece about it:
 http://bit.ly/19CG9s5 
- Chimene Suleyman, also a poet wrote an excellent essay:
http://www.poejazzi.com/fighting-against-the-fetishisation-of-women-doesnt-work-if-you-fetishise-women/http://www.poejazzi.com/fighting-against-the-fetishisation-of-women-doesnt-work-if-you-fetishise-women/
- MIA/۩ReverseColonialist۩ (@AnonFrantzfanon) and her tweet timeline from around this time https://twitter.com/AnonFrantzfanon/statuses/400411048643399680
- Bridget Minamore made an excellent storify of women on twitter: https://storify.com/bridgetminamore/lily-allen-and-satire

image credits:
Sarah Lucas, Chicken Knickers, 1997
Sarah Lucas, Bitch (detail) 1995

Sit back with a cuppa. This is a story about how one man helped an old woman across the street. With added extras.

About ten days ago I had surgery.

It's a fairly basic procedure; one i've had a couple of times before. Keyhole fixing of problems on the inside. It's not a massive deal, except that I am especially restless at the moment and I am not a good patient at the best of times.

So, a few nights ago, after leaving the house just once in four days, I ventured out to fulfill an appointment - a speaking engagement of sorts. it wasn't going to be a big deal. I'd done it a stack of times before. District line from Monument to Sloane Square. I'd take it easy.

Fine.
Except: service disruptions.
Packed trains, no seats, jostling, having to reach up to hold on, stop/start. and me unable to really pipe up and say 'hey - i'm not well, lemme sit down'. It wasn't an obvious injury, i was shy and, well, headphones. I also got stagefright, lost my usual bluster.

Suddenly i was quickly losing the confidence with which I usually navigate london and its frenetic tunnels. I wished I had one of those 'baby on board' badges. Even though there was no baby - it would make sense of my clutching and sensitivity.

I held out until St. James Park.
There i realised that I wasn't going to make it. Physically, or emporally. I was in a *lot* of pain and getting anxious. I scrambled out of the train, got to somewhere i could find signal (and hopefully someone who might be able to help), rang my connects to cancel and then stood. Struck dumb.

Clearly the underground isn't designed for the infirm. And because I haven't spent a gazillion years of my life here, it's the first time i'm really discovering it. I have no back-up plan. I'm like a rabbit in headlights.

I couldn't afford a cab home.  I didn't feel like i could ask my flatmate to come and get me yet. I knew that a good friend who also had a car was busy and everyone else was either at work, or about an hour a way by train.

I was still able to walk, slowly, and my stubbornness was still running the show. Besides, i was in the underground, so how hard could it be? I'll just make my way slowly back the way I came.

I realised, as the pain got worse, and I got less and less mobile, how different London is when you're not in sync with everyone. Like, really not in sync. so unsynched that it feels like you're in slow motion and watching the whole world go by.

Did i mention that the underground is not designed for the infirm? and, as such, no-one seamingly knows what to do when a young-looking white woman with a funny hair cut is shuffling along Bank station, holding onto all the rails.

They mostly just mind their business (which i was also partly grateful for), and go around. A few tuts. And a couple of young stoner girls whispering about being 'on it' and looking back at me. Thankfully I was just in pain and not 'on it' otherwise i would have been far more paranoid from then on.

Me and an old jamaican woman shuffling slowly in the opposite direction with heavy bags made eye contact and a brief nod of 'i year ya'. Solidarity in small doses, yo.

So i get to Bank DLR and, as i'm holding my guts, shuffling along the platform, a guy asks if i'm ok. He looks me right in the eye. And I say, no, not really, but thanks. And keep moving.
Because, well, i don't know what else to do. It's not clear what help I need.

Actually, it is, I really need to fast forward the world so that I'm in bed, laying down, not hurting. But i don't think this guy has that much power. Otherwise I would have jumped at him and pleaded it thus.

A point to note: I am not conditioned to say 'I'm not ok'.

I have become much more accustomed to it  over the years and often let people know when i'm feeling rubbish, or even just mildly neurotic. Heck, i can even ask for help from health professionals and some friends, when and if i'm ready.
But never to a stranger in public.

Anyway, he sees that, actually, I'm not doing well. He shadows me and sees that get on the train OK. When a fine young dude goes to grab the last seat nearby he fends him off - hey man, she's unwell.

Bless this man.

Usuallly the trip home from Bank station is a pretty quick journey. this time it was the longest I've ever had. By this stage, I gave no fucks. I knew that mr tradesman was looking at me/out for me, concerned, so i just closed my eyes and tried to absorb the pain.

Whilst also checking for phone signal.
I had been in touch with the a friend who was diverting his ways, to come and help. i had also tried both flatmates.
nothing.
I was relying on the kindness of strangers. And mostly with eye contact. I wasn't talking much.

On the way through the station, down the lift and across the street, Marcus - this man's name, is making sure no-one got in my way, Asked where I was from. When I said I was Australian, he smiled.
His boss was Australian and an old tradesman of his was too - someone who took him under his wing and taught him everything.

He said "everyone says Australians are racist, but Australians are some of the most generous people I know and they reached out to me when they didn't have to"
He also said, you know, black, white, whatever, you got to be there for people. He said. And he lived.

Because this black man was the only person who had bothered to ask if i was ok in that trip.
It's like white folk act like they don't have to look after one another 'cos they think 'ah, she's white, someone's got her back'. Or  'ah, young white girl that looks a bit unconventional, walking slowly holding onto things' - she's probably out of it.

I dunno, but I saw the people of London in a new way that night. Hardened, in their own privileged box. I've been that person, I know it. This story shouldn't be unusual for me. But it is.


Anyway, Marcus got me to the cafe where i would wait for my friend. He made sure i was as OK as i could be and then headed home.

 I hope I run into him on the street again. Because I doubt that, at the time, was particularly articulate  or gracious. I probably looked like i was terrified of him - being a stubborn woman in pain.

Marcus from St Lucia, thank you. I'm incredibly grateful for your kindness.

Thank you for:

a. not dumping my arse on the street when you found out that I was Australian and, by reputation, probably racist.

b. not ignoring me because i'm a young white woman who may or may not be scared of you based on your race and all the complications that come with racism still.

c. not ignoring me because i'm a young white woman who may or may not be scared of you based on your gender and all the complications that come with male violence.

d. following you sisters' advice: treat a woman how you'd like men to treat mama. You did. You treated a complete stranger like a sister - just another a human.