Installation at Malta Biennale

Cast Fibreglass

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

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

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, 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. 

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.

Recycled paper and egg carton - to be made to be destroyed. Accept the transformation. it is only a change of state

Eglomise Lithographic ink on glass

Oil and resin on Copper

Hand pulled Monotype

Hand pulled monotype