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.

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