Action, source and material form the basis of process

Madeleine Fenwick’s latest body of work is an erotic arsenal of feminist humour.

Fenwick has long been interested in the big questions, those surrounding myth, archetypes, human drives and human purpose. We are drawn into Fenwick’s fantastical anthropology museum, the scattered objects erotic and mischievous: many of them are weapons, and their shapes allude to female sexuality; vulvas, mouths, breasts.

Throughout the work, the drives of Eros and Thanatos are present. The dedication to Artemis sets the tone and draws us into the world of archetypal forces that the Greek gods inhabit. Fenwick’s approach to the primordial forces of desire and destruction is satirical (or Satyrical?). The artist observes and comments wryly, creating irreverent tools for humour and empowerment when faced with bleak realities.

The Eros/Thanathos drives anchor the body of work, giving it a political undercurrent. The tension they create reminds the viewer that in the midsts of playful discussions of female identity there remains violence, inequality, and danger for women in this age. The undercurrent of violence is never far, sometimes in the form of awkward fingers crawling out of a mouth and sometimes as a silent promise in the form of weaponry.

Fenwick’s series is a celebration of female hedonism and humour, tongue-in-cheek and subversive; it sets up an arsenal of questions, literally and metaphorically, and does it with a grin.

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Portfolio

Featured

Granny's Giant Tooth 2024

Installation at Malta Biennale

Cast Fibreglass

Omerta - 2022

Enforced omission is an egg in your mouth, waiting to break open.

The brittle secret shell welded to the tongue. Heavy. Illicit. Forbidden.

Twisted Tongue - 2022

Propaganda speaks with a tongue twisted out of shape.

The mouth is a sensual object - soft, yielding, transformative.

The mouth Is the centre of many of the fundamental components of human activity.

It consumes, speaks, breathes. It is the first contact of romance, communication, interaction.

It is the door to the soul as the eyes are the window.

The portal of the first and last breath of life.

Arrows for Artemis - 2022

Arrows for Artemis, goddess of the hunt, nature, and childbirth. Her virginal status gave her independence and equality in the male-dominated world of Greek mythology. The artist draws on the independence, and the violence and cruelty the goddess is known for as edges in her critique, and Artemis’s refusal to bow to external societal expectations. The arrows are tipped with pewter arrowheads, referencing vulvas and seeds, thus encompassing female and male fertility to provide a self-sufficient creative force. Artemis’s chastity may be more symbolical than physical: the sensuality of the work encouraging the viewer to be playful and curious in questioning the established mores. The chosen metal for the arrowheads, pewter, is associated to alchemical transformation, encouraging in turn a transformation in behaviour.

Grit you teef - 2022

Pewter mouth cast

Fenwick has made a series of mouths, a body part tied to sensuality as much as it is to intellect, being the vehicle of language and communication. It is also an opening through which meaning and expression can flow. We speak of the ‘mouth’ of a river; in this context, the mouth becomes a gateway, as the artist encourages a voyage of questioning that the viewer can embark on. These disembodied mouths have fingers coming out of them, creating an image of sensory discomfort: a reminder that all is not well in this discussion of female sensuality and liberation.