MELISSA MARRINS, TARYN FOX

December 5, 1993

 

This show along with the Strode exhibition marked a rise in the FLAT Gallery’s popularity amoungst younger students. Motivated by an interest to present portfolios for Technikon critiques, these two artists both addressed the subject of the female figure, but with approaches that were vastly different one from the other.
Fox’s presentation was a straightforward exhibition of paintings strongly grounded in the academic figure tradition taught at the Technikon. Marrins, on the other hand, had started to break away from painting to also explore assemblage. She showed both paintings and an installation that used the figure to satirically address issues of Catholicism and ‘beauty’.
These iconoclastic works, paintings framed to reference shrines, included images of Mary with the words “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” and collaged images of Jesus and Mary where Jesus asks Mary: “Your place or mine?” One included a self-portrait of Marrins where she inserted herself alongside Mary and Venus, referencing familiar Italian Renaissance images by way of an almost ‘pop art’ language. Though controversial in their conflation of ‘sacred’ themes with sexuality, Marrins claimed that she was not out to deliberately shock the viewer. Indeed her stated intention was more one of healing through the provocation of some ‘recognition’ in the viewer. In a 1995 interview for the FLAT newsletter Marrins and I spoke about the ‘controversial’ nature of her work:

Allen:               Some people find your work shocking, do you think it is? If so, do you think that the shock element provides a ‘tool’ for people to question their own taste?
Marrins:         This is an issue that I cannot understand. I do not find my work ‘shocking’, nor do I deliberately attempt to shock people. If I need to convey a particular feeling (and yes I deal with ‘uncomfortable’ feelings) then I will choose an image that for me adequately conveys that emotional state. Perhaps the ‘shock’ element lies in my juxtaposition of elements ‑ a rotten penis with syphilis next to a portrait of Jesus for example. I can only surmise that the ‘shock’ people feel comes out of an uncomfortable realization that they can relate on some level to my imagery. This is obvious. If they did not recognize some kind of understanding or manifestation of the image within themselves then they would not be shocked. I am not here to make things easy for the viewer. I would like them to re‑assess their realities through questioning mine.[1]

The use of the ‘grotesque’ and the act of ‘transgressing a taboo’, such as combining the sacred and the profane, were indeed strategies that Marrins employed both in this early exhibition and in projects that were to follow.[2] Russian Linguist Mikhail Bakhtin wrote extensively about the phenomenon of the ‘carnival’ and the use of the profane for serious intent. “Colloquial oaths and profanities”, for example, were for Bakhtin “a codified form of verbal protest, a repudiation of officialdom.” Interestingly, the nature of these ‘profanities’ often involved the use of religious imagery. In his seminal book on the work of Bakhtin, Michael Gardiner speaks to this notion:

In thematic terms, these oaths often involved the symbolic rending of the body, particularly the Lord’s body, and references to the bodily relics of saints and holy persons, and to diseases (especially venereal afflictions) and organs of the lower material stratum were commonplace.[3]

Bakhtin’s definitions of the ‘grotesque’ and ‘profane’ are relevant to Marrins’ work, not only in terms of the use of religious imagery, but in terms of her stated purpose. Certainly, such references could be employed in the spirit of cheap irony or ‘shock-effect’. For Marrins, there was an emphatic assertion that some ‘greater meaning’ might be uncovered. Gardiner goes on to say:

The term ‘grotesque’ itself usually conjures up notions of distortion or deformity, usually for the purposes of caricature or irony. For Bakhtin, however, the tendency towards extreme exaggeration in the grotesque is not simply a satirical device, which would fail to explain the ambivalence and unexpected richness and complexity of such images and their connection to seemingly disparate events and phenomena. When infused with grotesque imagery, objects transcend their own ‘natural’ boundaries and become fused or linked with other things. From this is derived their pregnant and two-sided nature, the quality of ‘unfinished becoming’ which is anathema to officialdom. Not surprisingly, Bakhtin asserts that this hyperbole and anamorphosis is positive and affirmative.[4]

Perhaps the central work in the exhibition was an installation constructed with sheet rubber suspended from the ceiling and supported by hand‑made coils that seemed to reference feces. On its crumpled surface was a portrait of Mary and on the floor below, making a shrine‑like circle were crumpled up bits of paper. In that same FLAT interview, she articulated what became her growing interest in installation:

On a personal level I find that I am fired by the challenge to transform and give new meaning to a space… in other words, the space is my canvas.[1]

Recently, the exhibition was discussed with Moe, MacKenny and Buster. A conversation ensued that addressed the ‘dialogue’ (perhaps unintentionally) that was created between Marrins and Fox’s work:

Buster:             But what an interesting context, putting her work with Melissa’s. All of a sudden, what is academic neutral painting is not neutral anymore. The fact that the female nude was considered for how long as a neutral… “its just about colour and form…” It seems very loaded to put a female nude, academic study next to Melissa’s work. Wow has the context shifted! The male nude, the same thing…
MacKenny:    Yes, but I don’t think that they were really conscious of that. I think the observation is a valid one and if it had been explored more then it probably would have had more… And these certainly came across as academic studies, except for the fragmented one. Actually if you look at Melissa’s suitcase… maybe they were more conscious of it than one realizes. I don’t know.
Moe:                 Maybe if they were here now they would see the connections that were maybe not apparent before.
MacKenny:    That is very often the case. You only make the connections much later.[2]

We also talked about the significance of the exhibition in terms of Marrins later work:

MacKenny:    She was quite, to put it mildly, irreverent… “Mary, Mary quite contrary”. I mean that could have been the title of the show.           
Buster:             Virginia, do you think that in her content, there are things that are consistent, even though she changed her format?
MacKenny:    Yes, I think that the whole show from Melissa’s point of view was highly ‘Catholic’. You have the icon and then you ridicule it. But at the same time, the skin is a flagellation…of St. Bartholomew…the flayed thing…    
Buster:             That’s the first thing I thought…
MacKenny:    Whether it was conscious or not, I think Melissa was pretty sussed at what she was doing. And I think she would make those connections. She made a suit later out of rubber latex with hair on it and she called it “Hersuit”. It was a wonderful pun between her suit, hairy, flagellation and hair-shirt. All of those things.
Buster:             And identity is such a consistent theme in her work. Is this her painting with her in the middle between ‘Mary’ and Botticelli’s ‘Venus’? I find that interesting that she is the same woman that took on the role of the “Hippie Chick” at the NSA. That she took those personas on for a while, that she would ‘paint’ herself thus…That she would explore where she would fit into these different images of woman. ‘Madonna’ or the ‘whore’, Venus or both?
Moe:                 I think it is a good example of how different her format was. If Melissa had to describe in that painting, the same thing about five times… Struggling with trying to make the format illusionistic, and the damn paint won’t mix to make the flesh colour… to a very time orientated performance thing where you stick something on you. The content is the same in both.
MacKenny:             This ‘hanging’ notion is quite interesting, because it comes up in her other work. I know that she always battled with painting. She always found difficulty in expressing the things she wanted to say with paint, and so I think at one point she just threw her hand up in the air and found another way of doing it. I don’t think that painting was the way she wanted to work.[3]

MELISSA MARRINS
Installation with rubber-latex, paper, resin, steel chain 1993