Art Reviews
Elizabeth Isley
Moosey Art
02/11/16
All My Mistakes In One Room is a refreshing call to attention for us and our society from artist Elizabeth Ilsley. Currently on show at Moosey Art until the 5th of November, the artist has gathered provocative, gut-punching pieces to enthrall us in the revival of feminism that has been seen across the media and the creative industries in recent years.
She has shot specific angles of images taken from pornographic materials around in the 60’s and 80’s. The depictions she has chosen to crop and enlarge are encouraging the audience to look beyond lust and see the distorted behaviours that pornography promotes so we can see the damage it is doing to our society.
Ilsley has mounted the stage among a clan of strong female leaders who are attempting to show our generation feminism is not a thing of the past, but rather a very prevalent and needed movement. Amidst the voices of Emma Watson and Pussy Riot, Ilsley is demonstrating gender is still very far from being equal. Things are not OK, and that must change.
The show documents the dirty underbelly of pornography, and Ilsley has pin-pricked the key issues undermining female sexuality in this practice, showing us that porn is much more active than in just the bedroom. It is infiltrating young minds, normalising the acts carried out in these videos, and teaching them it is acceptable to objectify women in these ways. Porn is everywhere on the Internet, easily accessible to young boys and girls who watch these videos and are unable to distinguish between reality and the acts taking place before them. Porn encourages the gender gap to widen and for women to be seen as no more than sexual objects designed for male pleasure. Porn is responsible for holding women to yet another unattainable expectation. The acts performed in those videos are in fact very meager in their representation of real sex. They are teaching boys that cum shots are the ultimate act of degradation and they are teaching women that in order to be good in bed, then you must do the things that these girls do. It is OK if you consent to enjoying these acts, but porn is not teaching people that they have a choice. It is teaching them to think this is what they should do.
Ilsley’s show is racy, dynamic and slap bang in the centre of an issue raging through the hearts, minds and genitalia of us all. It is a healthy F. U to the repressive traditional manners that keep us from discussing these important issues. Ilsley is throwing it right out on the table so we have no choice but to see the ugly mess before us. If she dares to look, then so should we.
Since she first modeled her leather jacket emblazoned with I SHAVE MY LEGS FOR YOU, Ilsley’s work has gone from strength to strength. It is brilliant to see such a young mind taking a firm and assertive stance against a problem that has shadowed our communities for an eternity.
You will find the show funny, shocking and perhaps even slightly unsettling. Ilsley makes you realise we need to start being a little bit uncomfortable, because the truth of this matter is not pretty. Ilsley is bang on the money in this exhibition for showing us, however, that this is no excuse for us not to take responsibility for this monster that we created, and it is no reason to avoid dealing with it any longer than we already have.