MEGGA BUBBLE SPACE BURBS 2013

A variety of themes have featured in works to date;identity, self created enclosures, the study of syndromes and illnesses, feminist theories, writers, theorists, literature, the domestic, ugliness and destruction. My solo exhibition ‘Megga Bubble Space Burbs’ Galway Arts Centre 2013 was the culmination of a body of work I made during this six month residency. I researched the work and writings of the America literary icon Sylvia Plath and the idea of the “bell jar syndrome” that grew and spread across campuses in America during the sixties as a result of her novel The Bell Jar. The art objects I make act as a lever to represent this study as a response to her writings. Plath had a contempt for her domestic family life, the failings of her marriage, the drifting, rootless age, the peculiar sense of homelessness, a fascination with death and a determination to try everything knowing it would never stop her suffering. She longed for the ‘bell jar’ to lift. The enclosure and the struggle to remove this hypothetical bell jar for women today is a struggle. It is not a question of conflict in a woman’s life between the feminine and the work of art but a testament to her ambitious rage to be recognised as a writer. I have been intrigued by her sense of combat and brute force which was new for female writer’s at that time. For this installation I read her writings and decided to collaborate with Claire-Louise Bennett a contemporary female writer. I commissioned her to write a short story for the visual diary of drawings, research notes and ideas that I made during the residency. It was important to work with a writer in order to bring context to this installation by developing a cross over between the life of Sylvia Plath and a contemporary writer. I reflect on the female position in society within this installation. Outside of this there are social constraints on the lives of women that exist like a thin skin like enclosure on the surface. I want to look at these enclosures to question what space women happen to occupy in our contemporary world today.


    © 2021 Vicky Smith. All rights reserved.