Disappointing Doll is inspired by a photograph from a Sydney asylum c.1860: the image of a girl recorded only as ‘Orphan child aged 3’. The work explores how everyday female experiences have historically been deemed unworthy of intellectual consideration; and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s ideas on how children use dolls to seek boundaries of their own self. It combines gesture with cinematic devices to evoke a psychological space, one where shame and seclusion from the outside world lead girls in institutionalized care to stand in for imagined mothers, sisters and lovers; and where child's play can echo through the bodies of grown women.

 

Cordelia Beresford, Disappointing Doll (still) 2019, 2 channel HD video installation, stereo sound.

 

When
Saturday 30 March - Sunday 9 June