She didn’t lick it off a stone

2020 / Artereal

Gallery 2

Blood, in all its guises: viscous, visceral, cultural, familial, ritualistic and female flows throughout Stevie Fieldsend’s art. The Irish have a saying: ”She didn’t lick it off a stone…” used when someone has a quality reminiscent of a parent or kin connection. The maxim, used in a friend’s response to Stevie’s recent Facebook post honouring her late grandmother resonates in her latest body of work that mirrors the magic and the mystery of matriarchies; of the angst, trauma, triumphs and magnificence of giving life.

Her installation “She didn’t lick it off a stone” calls on the stylistic and emotional heritage of her art heroes Anish Kapoor, Louise Bourgeois, Pina Bausch, Mikala Dwyer and Eva Hesse meshed with the artist’s raw, deeply felt, acutely personal yet universal paean to the privilege, passage and enduring power of womanhood.

A trio of silver, soaring, omnipotent, spirits, Song of Songs, 1, 2 and 3, trumpet the majesty of matriarchy. (Stevie “called her Nana ‘Lady’ for the first 6 years of her life…”)

The materials of their making – glass, fragile, forged in fire, flowing liquid to solid, and phosphorescent silken threads connect with the lunar tidal flow and female synchronicity of moon, menses and menopause. Subsumed in the vortex of translucent glass are distortions and reflections that emulate the primal evolutionary mirroring response of mother and baby as they attune and lay the foundation for a child’s sense of self.

There is no cake, no candles, no rite for the commencement of menses and with it the womanly privilege and power to create and carry new life within her.

The immense caul How vast is the sum of them alludes to the primal love the artist “never knew existed before I gave birth” and the realities of the rip, tear, stretch then repair of trans-generational trauma “from my great grandmother to my mother’s mother and myself and on”.

The silvery slink and stained fleshly lure of a webbed membrane of flimsy, torn yet unbreakable stockings is intended as a performative work by the artist: “I will visit it at various stages within the time frame of the exhibition which also reflects the menstruation period of 28 days, to re-stitch and repair parts of the stocking work – sometime alone and sometimes with my mother.”

“… As I sew one hundred and sixteen grey silver stockings together to join another two hundred or so others  – I see it as a great analogy to motherhood, some days I can not bear it and look elsewhere for quick fixes of spontaneity – but sewing takes great focus and stillness even if it is fucked up and badly done, I return to it day after day – adding and adding like housework, like rearing a child – it is a great struggle as well as profoundly meaningful and it takes great patience but at different points like my son turning 21 tomorrow – I get to stand back and revel in the magic and love of it all. … A great labour of love. So as I sew and sew – it then becomes a tapestry of magnificence and significance as it echoes the notion and practice of attachment and disorganised attachment – this particular work will never end – just as a mother’s work is never done… I intend to return to it and it will morph from one work into another and another as Louise Bourgeois says ‘I do, I undo and I redo”. This is the intention of this ever–stretching work, “she didn’t lick it off a stone” – an Irish saying for blood and that what is handed down, good or bad.”

 – Barbara Dowse
Curator, Artereal

Photography Jessica Maurer