Queen & Ossington : The Mute Book

If Cindy Sherman and Gustav Klimt had a lovechild, the photographic evidence of their coupling is hanging on the walls of the Katharine Mulherin Gallery on Queen Street. The Mute Book, a series of photographs by the intriguingly named Janieta Eyre, is on display until June 9th 2013 in conjunction with the CONTACT photography festival.

These large-scale black and white photographs have a collage-like feel to them, combining pattern and decoration style textiles and Klimt-like textures with female portraits. There is an oppressed feeling to the depictions of these women. Perhaps its a combination of the abstract makeup dissecting their features, the monochromatic colour palette, and the use of patterns & images that can't help but throw back to an older time of domestic femininity.

The pattern & decoration movement and the photographs of Cindy Sherman seek to challenge traditional depictions of domestic or feminine stereotypes. It was all a part of the art world's answer to second-wave feminism.

But what now? This is 2013 and we are moving far beyond the days of burning bras. How does the work of Janieta Eyre (whose very name is a strikingly convenient reference to a classic female icon) speak to where feminism is today? Do images of mute women surrounded by floral prints really speak to today's feminists? And what has Klimt got to do with it?

Perhaps Eyre's work is intended to be more personal than socio-political, but with such strong references to feminist artists and art movements how can we not wonder about what this means for contemporary art by women?

I would like to see a female artist create a work that doesn't remind me of an art history lecture on the 1970s & 80s. Do these references to past generations mean that we haven't come as far as we'd hoped? Or that we have yet to figure out what it means to be a feminist today? Or maybe we no longer need a movement. Maybe what I'm looking for is proof that women have finally gotten what we've always wanted : the freedom to live and make art without our gender being an inherent political statement.

The Mute Book
Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects
1086 Queen St W
416-993-6510
www.katharinemulherin.com