It’s 1989. George Michael’s song Faith is topping the charts and Madonna is preparing for her first global Blond Ambition tour.
Artist Tania Ferrier is in New York, working behind the bar at a go-go girls men’s club in Brooklyn Heights – a job she’ll have until 1992 when the club closes after a policeman was shot on the premises.
Ferrier’s view at the time was one where she saw parades of gorgeous women dancing on stages for the pleasure of men every night. Unfortunately, this meant she was also privy to some rarely spoken of acts of sexual harassment towards these women that were also part of this scene.
One particular night, in response to a dancer’s complaint to Ferrier about an on-stage harassment incident, the artist consoled the dancer (named Angel) by suggesting she would make her some shark underwear – so they could bite back.
This turned out to be very powerful moment in Ferrier’s art practice. It was the moment she began melding art, fashion and political activism to help spur a wave of female empowerment, using her Angry Underwear artworks to transform ideas of what it meant to be a strong women on stage.
The question is – how well do these artworks read today? And why is now a key moment to remind us of their power?
According to Pop Porn co-curator (also Curator of City of Fremantle Art Collection) Andre Lipscombe, the space recently created by the #MeToo movement has given new room for concerns about violence against women and feminist ideas to be explored.
Indeed, the current zeitgeist is one where acts of sexual violence against women, and their rights to be heard and believed when they speak up, is a strong narrative for our age.
In this way, Ferrier’s clever and imaginative works that serve as rebuffs to ideas of women as powerless objects with no agency to fight back, are right on target.
However, several curatorial decisions in the Pop Porn exhibition – where Ferrier’s Angry Underwear are presented alongside some of her more recent collage works on paper and animations (created as part of an artist residency at Fremantle Arts Centre in 2021), do not do them justice.
Firstly, the chosen space for their display feels like a closet when Ferrier’s works deserve the grand ballroom.
The clusters of Angry Underwear on show – which are displayed in three groups of three – appear stifled and dimly lit.
Compared to some of Ferrier’s previous Angry Underwear shows (including an infamous 1990s Perth show where certain conservative politicians railed against the exhibition as an insulting use of public funds), this opportunity feels underutilised.
To be clear, Ferrier’s works themselves deserve a resounding 5 out of 5. They are remarkable pieces which, in thumbing their nose at the patriarchy, also present sharp commentary on art history itself. (I’m thinking here of one underwear set which portrays Picasso’s 1907 work Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and that creates a striking link to another moment where an artist took a razor blade to societal ideals of feminine beauty.)
Ferrier’s more recent collage works are also interesting dissections of our society’s compulsions to objectify certain female bodies, and show parallels with Australian artist Deborah Kelly’s 2016 Lying Woman animations and Venus collage works, which cross similar terrain.
Overall, Ferrier’s iconic Angry Underwear pieces serve as sharp and humorous reminders of some of the unequal gender structures that regrettably, seem to persist – still! – to this day.
Read: Theatre review: The Comedy of Errors
Yes, we can tell ourselves that 2022 is a long way from 1992 – and in many ways, it is. But artists like Ferrier are experts in giving us the space to pause and reflect on work still left to do. Hopefully, future public displays of these works will be given the presence and space they require to be more deeply understood.
Tania Ferrier: Pop Porn
Fremantle Arts Centre
Tania Ferrier: Pop Porn is on display until 23 October 2022
