What is Doubling?
The Surrealist notion of 'Doubling' is a technique used to fracture and destabilize an object/image. The uncanny shudder felt from duplication also draws on a crisis of identity of divisions of the self (Unconscious/conscious and/or binary of reality/illusion).
A sense of humour is found in Veronica Habib's 'I Love What You Have Done With Your Hair, Underwear Brief, G-String and Dress' which strongly inspired the bridged link between 'Doubling'. After conversation and consideration of Habib's choice of materials and ideas (clothing/hair and warping of the familiar codes/perceptions of body image/sexuality), I saw a strong link in my manipulation of Mcdonalds Uniforms. The cutting of the uniforms served to create holes to acknowledge the space outside of the uniform – that is left open to audience interpretation.
Doubling uses the pseudonym of Veronica Habib to show the value of collaborative authorship and the importance of acknowledging fellow artists in process-based projects. This acknowledgement involves speaking with artists in process-based projects in a means of verbal and non-verbal language. After much discussion with Habib I asked her if I could use her name as alias.
The idea of assuming an alias came from the 'Doubling' of Helen L Sturgess and Helen M Sturgess, two artists with the exact same first and last name who were placed in Feral 3's project week. The blurry lines between who was who, I felt created a unintended collaborative authorship. Extending on this idea the pseudonym opens up discussion for collaborative authorship, and visibility and invisibility of the artist in an artwork.
The idea of Doubling, also forms a dialogue with Andrew Christie's 'Echo' through the duplication and manipulation of everyday objects (basket ball hoops – Mcdonalds T-shirts). Christie's work echoes a sense of erotic doubling, where a hoop net is interwoven connecting the two together. If we think of Echo in literal terms the action of shooting a basket ball into the hoop would cause the ball to clot in this umbilical cord-like net. This poetically playful gesture suggests something deeper of the idea of the Everyday such as a feeling of repetition, monotony and mimicry that characterises everyday life.
The remains of the shirts also form a reference to Margaret Roberts 'Blps', where the leftovers form markers on the floor. Since 'Cutendpaste' a prior process-based show I participated in with Marg, I have been influenced by her spatial interests in merging abstract space with everyday familiar space. The abstraction of the everyday object (Maccas uniform) is an attempt to merge these two spaces, to draw on relationship between work practice and art practice. The instability of casualisation in the workplace is felt by many artists across broad spectrum of professions: hospitality, retail, and education. Doubling attempts to open questions on the impact of work relations on art practice, the holes acting as a point to see-through.
Melissa Maree
25 Jan 2015