Sirens; The Anatomy of Violence

Although the Sirens have represented many things allegorically throughout their history in literature- their symbolic nature is not the only thing that has inspired this work. They represent many things to me on a physical level; they represent beauty and death as being irreversibly intertwined, flesh, blood, bones, and teeth- the physical manifestations of the destruction they wreak, and in antithesis to these things they are emblematic of birds, the delicate fragility of their wings, their elegance of movement, their vulnerability. In my textiles work I propose to concentrate my attentions on this; the juxtaposition of the woman and bird; fury and beauty, flesh and feather.

In considering the violent, visceral nature of the Sirens I have focused my research on what one might call the anatomy of violence; making delicate observations in pencil of antique specimens of teeth, bones, human deformities and body parts in the Hunterian Museum. I also visited slaughterhouses, abattoirs, butchers and the long established Smithfields Meat Market- Photographing meat carcasses and hunks of flesh suspended from meat hooks and translating these photographs into oil paintings and studies. This initial research was heavily influenced by the work of Francis Bacon and Jenny Saville; particularly “Three studies for figures at the base of a Crucifixion,” on display in the Tate Modern, and Saville’s “Suspension”.