'Offence and Seduction'
Carol Nathan Levin and Frederick Clarke at Res GalleryHumans generally have a twisted, almost irreverent, understanding of female genitalia. We tend to view it as a purely sensual and sexual part of the body, rather than embrace its reproductive nature. Women are often blighted by a heavily patriarchal definition of their own sexuality, which has been tainted with ideas of shame, dirtiness and secrecy, and which attempts to negate the vagina’s existence, rather than embracing its centrality to human life and its inherent beauty. Frederick Clarke notes that there is a reason that 'we refer to Mother Earth as a feminine energy, cyclic and malleable, moving with a natural flux that both allows and ultimately destroys constructed rigidity.'
Carol Nathan Levin deals with the painful aftermath of removing her ovaries to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer. Her approach is that 'something comes from nothing, out of the void; one comes out of zero, we as woman contain the nothing'. With this exhibition both artists attempt to demystify female genitalia, and correct the imbalance in which we all live through their approaches, which foreground beauty, mystery and femininity.
05 June - 28 July
