Lauren McCartney

RIOT
27 November - 13 December

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Van Badham, Ian Butler, Dr. Christina Chau, Brad Coleman, Dr. Thea
Costantino, Dr. Christopher Crouch, Tom Hogan, Mungo and Camper Honey-Castleden,
Vashti Innes-Brown, Kim Kim Kim, Johanna Niessner, Amber McCartney, Dave McCartney,
Jo McCartney, Xavier Pardos, Francis Russell, Dr. Anne Schilo, Nena Smith, Tom Smith, Jack
Wansbrough, the staff at John Curtin Gallery, all my friends, family, PhD comrades, and
Dr. Andrew Sunley Smith for all his love and support.

While still waiting for that great day of general emancipation

which they have so long been promised, women are increasingly
beginning to make public their capacities in the arts.
- Anonymous, LArtiste journal, Paris, 1836.

Lauren McCartney, Fail Harder, Fail Better! 2015, video, 4:31.

Lauren McCartney, Parody Heals, 2015, video, 2:04.

The above quote is taken from an essay published under the title Les
Dames Artistes in what was, at time of its publication in 1836, Frances
principal art journal. It appeared during a heady year; the painting
community of Paris heaved with the activity of famous talents like Corot,
Delaroche, Delacroix and Ingres - their pack thick with the stereotype of
the passionate, visionary, heroic painter. Delacroix was passionately in
love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly
as possible, gushed Beaudelaire. Delaroche declared There is one
thing more powerful than kings and all the soldiers of the world - and
that is the visionary who has the courage to persevere. Ingres adopted
self-swagger; Ce que lon sait, il faut le savoir lpe la main, was a
repeated quip, its bombastic translation: Whatever you know, you must
know it with sword in hand.
But this role of heroic artist was a masculine preserve - and therefore not
one with which the LArtiste essayist wished the women painters of Paris
enfranchised. The essayist sought the participation of female artists only
in those forms of painting that would suit those with family duties, and
those who are of a modest and retiring disposition.

As the essay expands:

I refer not here to those who, mistaking the vocation of their
sex, are filled with the desire to be painters in the same manner
as men. Even if the noisy, over-familiar atmosphere of the studio
itself were not essentially antipathetic to the codes of decency
imposed on women, their physical weakness, and their shy and
tender imagination would be confused in the presence of the large
canvasses, and of subjects either too free or too restricting, such as
which normally form the basis of great painting.
The sentiment may be 179 years old, but for all the transformations
experienced within the practice and analysis of painting since that time,
it is an ideological heritage that yet abides. Even after the revolutions
of modernism and abstraction, Linda Nochlin argued in 1971 that the
accolade of greatness was still and forever denied to women. For
Nochlin, greatness itself was a masculine stereotype conferred
on those male artists who could affirm the prejudice of masculine
institutions, rather a status somehow earned by an individuals objective
talent.

Lauren McCartney, Limp, 2015, video, 3:04.

Its now 2015, and as a woman painter and a feminist artist, Lauren
McCartneys preoccupation is the contemporary persistence of
patriarchal mythology that lionises the great, strong, passionate,
enduringly male, heroic artist. With both Nochlins conclusions and
the masculinist cult of the post-Pollockian action painter in mind,
McCartneys subject in Gestural Riot takes her physical weakness as a
woman to the large canvasses of great painting. McCartney certainly
knows painting, but the sword in her hand is a needle of ridicule.
McCartney satirises her gendered exclusion from the greatness

Lauren McCartney, Spare Rib, 2015, video, 3:52.

afforded male action painters through a performance of action painting

tasks that restrict or deny her capacity to create a physical work.
Whether attempting to land paint on canvas by hula-hooping, smothering
herself in paint as a breathing canvas or wrapping herself in one of her
own painted canvases so she is barely able to move, McCartneys work
demonstrate the historically restricted role offered to female painters
by subjecting her (female) body to painting routines in which she
experiences pain and failure.
As McCartney explains, performing a painterly process that predetermines a methodological failure is a satire of a context that
structurally denies women recognition of achievement. The joke is, of
course, that the end result of failing at her painting tasks is the creation
of a painting.
I do not refer to failure as a means of being unable to succeed, says
McCartney instead my understanding of failure is embedded in the
concept that women have already failed because they are female.
Its a wise and subtle point, though McCartney should feel historically
encouraged in her efforts by the LArtiste essayist of 1836. As the essay
concludes;
Any success is worthy of recognition, and women must surely be
encouraged in any excursion they make outside the limits imposed
upon them. One should never demand that a woman surpass
her limitations; but any great achievement should receive its just
reward.
Van Badham is an activist, writer and columnist for The Guardian

This publication supports the exhibition:

SoDA2015
John Curtin Gallery
27 November 13 December 2015
John Curtin Gallery
Building 200A, Curtin University
Kent Street, Bentley
Western Australia 6102
Phone: +61 (0)8 9266 4155
Email: gallery@curtin.edu.au
Website: www.johncurtingallery.curtin.edu.au
Publication copyright 2015 Lauren McCartney
Text copyright Van Badham
Catalogue design by Johanna Niessner
All rights reserved
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research, criticism or review, as permitted under the copyright act, no material whether written
or photographic may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or
by any means without the written permission of the artist, authors and Curtin University. The
opinions expressed in this catalogue are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the
John Curtin Gallery or Curtin University.
All works of art are copyright of the artist.