I Do; I Undo; I Redo
2022 / Mosman Art Gallery
The title of this installation I do; I undo; I redo is taken from a work by the French- American artist Louise Bourgeois that was shown at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in the year 2000. Bourgeois’ work was always deeply personal and often referenced her own childhood. In I do; I undo; I redo she created 3 steel towers which visitors could climb. These spaces created chances for intimate moments between strangers as they came face to face with one another on the stairs or narrow entrances. They could watch themselves and each-other in the mirrored surfaces that surrounded the work.
At the centre of Bourgeois’ work is a figure of the mother and child. This focus on the maternal is central to Fieldsend’s work where she has transformed the gallery space into a womb-like space by hand-stitching countless cut up stockings.
– Kelly McDonald
Curator, Mosman Art Gallery
This stocking creation began in 2018. It is an ongoing, life-long work that will continue to morph and evolve, as the feminine maternal body does and as we all do in life. The installation references Louise Bourgeois’ work, also titled I do; I undo; I redo, in the sense of constant change, upheaval and adaption that comes with motherhood. But such adaption is by no means an act of acquiescence or submission. It is a continual act of primal love, protection and endurance often in the face of adversity, poverty and invisibility within this patriarchal misogynistic culture.
Being a mother does not necessarily mean it’s a natural fit or a desirable role. Sometimes, it’s not well bonded, more enmeshed or cut off. Often, it can feel like forced labour and is a great struggle. Usually, we swing between all these realities. Nevertheless, the maternal relationship is perhaps the most profound connection that shapes and defines all of us in body and essence.
As Bourgeois so aptly describes, “I do is an active state. It’s a positive affirmation. I am in control, and I move forward towards a goal or a wish or a desire. The undo is the unravelling. The torment that things are not right and the anxiety of not knowing what to do. The redo means a solution is found to the problem. It may not be the answer, but there is an attempt to go forward.”
My work I do; I undo; I redo at Mosman Art Gallery’s The Cube is the third iteration of the work. Its first conception was anchored in disorganised attachment in early child development at my solo exhibition titled hereafter at Artereal Gallery, Sydney. The work’s second iteration was featured twice as two forms in She didn’t lick it off a stone, my 2020 solo exhibition at Artereal Gallery. It explored transgenerational trauma, rupture and repair as an installation, whilst a sense of abject beauty and entrapment was captured in a video performance.
– Stevie Fieldsend
Photography Jacquie Manning
Welcome to my cave
Welcome to my cave, my cathedral, my meaning, my freak—
Where the milky white spider weaves place from her body, a place traced from inside.
Shelter, shade, haven or horror?
This is her world, these were the legs, in her mind… somewhere high, somewhere kind—magical abject, dreamy tragic…
Transcending physical…
I’m a fucking black angel on a bender—bending real, concealing your deal, sealed in shame, sealed and stained.
Beneath my brain, you remain until I spin you out from my little finger, casting ghosts of you—and where all the others linger…
You stole my sleep but not my spirit.
You stole my sleep but not my spirit.
I’ll cast a spell of what was felt, what was sensed… how it smelt. Feed me sugar, feed me smoke,
close my eyes, and invoke… a shiny silver night shuttle bursting through your reality,
a scantily-clad galaxy---------stretched all around me---------
I loved you more than stars, but they exploded years ago.
I create to excavate and touch your face.
I create to integrate and put you back in place.
I’ll make diamonds out of you.
Corners of freedom, candlelit canvas, burnt orange holes leading to sky.
A land with no men, mirrors, or doors,
just a bunch of cave women sitting in the dirt, getting high,
singing siren songs, strumming their guitars.
I slept beside creeks and fires in hexagons, huts, tents, tarps, tipis, yurts, and rusty-musty cars—
underneath my red eyes and dusty stars.
Membranes, ruptures, love and blood.
Coming out of my body, coming into my body. Coming out of my body, coming into my body.
KABOOM!
A building with 51 floors—just dropped out, now a big room.
The opposite of compartmentalisation.
The child, the mother, the middle-aged lady in a state of reconciliation.
Well, water off a fuck’s back, I say as I put my inferno jacket away.
The streets are full of wrecked people limping through the day.
We’re from the fundamentally fuckedupness movement.
There are heaps of us here.
It’s a little ritual, a gestural re-enactment, a womb memorial.
The lovechild of profound pain and trauma smiling back at you,
the visceral intersection of beauty and horror.
It’s a blessing. It’s breath.
It’s all I can do.
Please accept this as my offering to you. I hope you feel something…
– Stevie Fieldsend