SUPERCUT x MELANIA JACK
29 March — 1 May 2022
Strike
The Ironing Maidens
Melania Jack / Strike 2022 / projection, sheet, iron and ironing board / dimensions variable / © Melania Jack
‘Strike’ is a projection sculpture using collaged footage with animated elements and domestic objects. The work foregrounds unpaid domestic labour and low paid factory work and how this work has been feminised. It is constructed of an ironing board and iron, a men’s business shirt, tea towels and projected video.
The nature of ironing is that it is repetitive, unrelenting, exhausting and in the domestic sphere, unpaid. The iron here is used as an iconic symbol of domestic labour. It evokes a sense of pressure, heat, exhaustion, of a never ending cycle. Unpaid domestic labour is the work behind the work, the invisible, unacknowledged, unpaid workforce.
The work expands on this concept of labour and explores the transglobal workforce behind the production of domestic technology. Low paid factory work is the labour that enslaves one sector to empower another. The gendered and racial biases that sees women’s nimble fingers put to use for the technological future.
Within the imagery of this piece is the silhouette of the 1950’s white suburban woman, chained to her iron. Popular feminism has worried for this woman. But the image is glitching. We see glimpses of the other women who are chained to the iron. In factories building them, in commercial laundries, textile and clothing factories, in care facilities, in homes all over the world. They are women, but they do not fit this silhouette.
Finally, the business shirt hangs as the draped flag of patriarchy and capitalism. It is consistently in need of ironing. Everyday, it requires electricity and attention; to heat the iron, to press the fabric, to transform its wrinkled wash basket form and restore its prestige. Who is doing this work?
- Melania Jack
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Outer Space Window Gallery
2R-C, 420 Brunswick Street
Fortitude Valley Q 4006
(map here)
Melania Jack is a queer, multiplatform artist of the experimental art duo – The Ironing Maidens, who turn irons and ironing boards into electronic instruments to explore themes of technology, gender and domestic labour. The Ironing Maidens have won innovation awards, toured regional laundromats as site specific spaces and performed at international festivals. Melania uses collaged projection sourced from archival footage to explore gender bias within exploitative labour practices, particularly within the domestic and technology areas. With a sense of irony and using familiar household items, the practice aims to deconstruct and question the gender binary and class norms.
Documentation by Louis Lim
SUPERCUT is supported by the Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government Initiative and is presented in partnership with Artspace Mackay and Northsite Contemporary Arts, Cairns.