Male Order part I

Male Order was a two part installation commissioned by the Sydney Mardi Gras Arts Festival 1999 and exhibited at the Mura Clay Gallery & Cafe Sleaze

Part I - Homo Neurotica examined the paradoxes inherent in the presentation of masculinity. Any sexualised image of a man must contain a set of dichotomies. As Richard Dyer puts it;

‘... it is an image to be looked at, however it is not the male role to be looked at’

The phallus as object invokes an ambivalent response;

‘... The visible dicks ... towards which their eyes might incautiously turn, are understood to carry a sort of Surgeon General’s warning that labels them precisely as ‘nothing to look at’, thus granting them all the power and danger of Yahweh rising up before Moses from out of another sort of bush ... All men sufficient to stand before it must always in turn be free to fall: Free that is to fall precisely into the shame of visibility fitting as punishment for the stolen glance that attempts to see beneath the veil, that precious invisible cloth, by means of which the naked dick is tricked out in phallic drag’.*

*Edelman, L. (1996) Men’s Room. In J. Sanders (ed) Stud; Architectures of Masculinity. New York Princeton Architectural Press. p155-157