Goodman has solidified her place in art innovation history through painting using sequins and in Altered States, she uses the glittering portraits as an elixir to the often mundanity of everyday life. Inspired by the works of American surrealist painter and founding member of the women’s liberation movement in Mexico in the 1970s, Leanora Carrington, Goodman references and reimagines some of Carrington’s work in Altered States. Much like her venturing into ceramics, the artist employs sequins in new techniques to showcase escapism through our current obsession with magical realism. Some paintings are portrayals of dreamlike states created to mimic 3-D like effects where the sequined characters almost leap out at you, while others adorn elaborate costumes fit for a sci-fi series. A costume change, like popping a pill, can alter a mood and a room.

Text by Lerato Tshabalala

The ‘Pillars’ – as Goodman refers to the sculptures – are ceramic structures of pills, assembled by shapes, colours and sizes to form towers of tablets that leave you somewhat discombobulated because of their sheer magnitude, but chiefly as reminders of your own mortality.

“I suppose the artworks are me trying to make peace with human fragility and how there are all these aspects in ourselves. We all have that innate compulsion to sometimes escape our lives but also this very sincere and earnest desire to be better. We need all these things – pills, affirmations, release and so on – to prop ourselves up,” explains Goodman.

Grappling with her own vulnerability has caused Goodman to look into the ever-changing human body, and mind, that frequently vacillate between strength and frailty. As the world heaves and sighs through all the supersonic change we’re experiencing, pop culture points to our collective need to live in any world other than this one, where we’re able to fly and soar above our limitations.

Goodman explains, “I have always been interested in the body as a kind state and sovereignty, that we turn inwards when we have little control on the outside. So, the more out of control our outer world seems, we turn inwards because that's the only place where you have any sense of control.”

What Goodman achieves with this exhibition is to hold a mirror up to humanity – our yearning for healing and our inherent desire to dream, to be better – without judgement or exultation.

Text by Lerato Tshabalala

The revellers were apparently hurled back into a non-rational, pre-intellectual state, where the personality was replaced by something completely different - and by ‘different’, I mean something to all appearances not mortal. Inhuman. *

Julian Morrow in The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tart

The Greek root for ‘ecstasy’ is ekstasis, meaning ‘to stand outside yourself’ – a feeling pursued by those who wish to escape or seek renewal through the suspension of rational thought and action.

Frances Goodman’s new solo exhibition at SPECTA entitled Ecstasy takes as its subject the quest for meaning where material needs, wants and de-sires have been mollified and money is no object. Perhaps ‘the void’ is felt more keenly by those unable to obscure it with the pursuit of basic earthly requirements. Ecstasy considers existential anguish as it is expressed and expunged by the privileged few.

Two sequin-embroidered panel works Beckoning and The Dance draw the viewer directly into the realm of iridescent release. The Dance is titled after Matisse’s famous painting (1910), and follows Goodman’s interest in historical depictions of women in nature. Goodman’s The Dance consists of three panels featuring heavily made-up figures in sparkling, otherworldly costumes moving in a formation that mimics the circle of dancing bodies in Matisse’s work. In Beckoning, a lone figure in a Bridgerton-worthy headdress offers a quick, come-hither look as she disappears into dense green foliage.

Beckoning and The Dance gesture to a culture of carefully curated, ritualised contemporary retreats, festivals and parties in which substantial capital outlay enables temporary access to immersive, redemptive and hedonistic experi-ence. Such events vary dramatically in scope, scale and in the nature of their offerings, but the promotion of healing, self-expression and the shifting of perspective through ceremonial and participatory performance, dance, guided mediation, cultural appropriation, burnt offerings and the use of psychedelics and ecstasy are common features.

The desire to get out of your mind is not the exclusive preserve of the rich, nor is the pursuit of healing and psycholo-gical release through ritual, ceremony, drug-taking, or a combination of these. For the purposes of Ecstasy however, Goodman is characteristically interested in cultural commodification and social capital. In this case, that means the outfits, the make-up, the glamour and the aesthetic and financial excesses associated with a particular cultural phenomenon. Characteristically also, Goodman’s magical, alluring surfaces and blunt missives both marvel at, and critique her subject.

Chloë Reid

Goodman’s distinctive, colourful and tightly-intertwined nail sculptures that often look like writhing snakes have begun to unravel into ribbons, scrolls or discarded bandages that have a more distinctly sardonic tone as they become text-based works that allude to digital signage with their flickering, impermanent empty messages on constant repeat. I WANT MORE reads a flag of pink, blue and silver acrylic nails; THIS IS IT/IS THIS IT? repeats in and on itself in a twisted blue and gold scroll, that reflects an emptiness felt by those who want for nothing, materially. The archetype behind this demanding uncertainty is searching for a world beyond the one they know and own.

“Transmogrify” means to “transform in a surprising or magical manner”. That is the process that I wanted to explore, in both the subject matter of and the way I use my materials in, my upcoming third solo exhibition at Richard Taittinger Gallery titled Transmogrified. The genesis of the new series of sequin paintings for the exhibition lies in the work I did during the 2020 lockdown. Unable to work with other people in a live environment, I turned to the social media platforms available to me. The extreme makeup/makeover trend – already popular even before the lockdown – rose to new heights during it because people were isolated at home with a lot of time on their hands. What appeared to start as a very niche and exclusive drag subculture moved into the mainstream. “Makeup has become a subculture all of its own. In communities centred around Instagram and YouTube, young people gather virtually to look for inspiration, swap product tips and master tricky techniques.” What is fascinating about this new subculture is that it is taking place in isolation; it is a solitary endevour. People are applying makeup in order to perform within the confines of their own homes, dressing up, taking a photo and then just removing it. The very essence of what it means to perform has changed. Instead of dressing up and preparing to step out in front of an audience, the act of dressing up has become the performance. The act of viewing and gratifying oneself is as important as the approval of the very removed audience. People are becoming their own social media avatars “crossing the boundaries of reality to create extreme, experimental and obviously doctored versions of themselves… Suddenly, your identity is just the beginning of the story: it’s the catalyst to a whole” . The makeup transformations can be beautiful or terrifying, monsterous or magical, and often play into old beauty stereotypes. The goal of the process appears to be the change itself: the masking, the concealing of one’s own identity to reveal something other, something new, something full of untamed potential, a visual depiction of an idea of oneself. The actor is also the product. Because sequins refract, reflect and change colour according to your viewpoint, I felt that using them to transform the portraits I had photographed would highlight this theme of metamorphosis. They add a magical, ‘unreal’ feel to the characters portrayed. The rise in the makeup/makeover subculture also ties in with my own long-standing interest in the beauty industry, and how it uses people’s insecurites and aspirations to further its own financial ends. The current trend is premised on consumerism; it is consumerism as subculture. The people within this beauty subculture seem to use the trappings of the consumer industry in order to transform and empower themselves. But the beauty industry has in turn realigned itself to use the vogue to its advantage, by strategically supplying their products directly to the seemingly empowered (or perhaps commodotised) to experiment with on social media, thus cutting out the need to invest in advertising campaigns. The users themselves become the ultimate product placement, proving by example the effectiveness and desireability of a company’s products. The two have become intricately interwined and entangled in one another.

2021

TEXT BY OLIVIA BARRELL

Frances Goodman is a contemporary conceptual artist from South Africa who has been repurposing and transforming Medium since the 1990s in order to raise questions around feminine identity — especially in relation to social norms, popular culture, and the beauty industry. Goodman uses objects that stand almost as icons within popular subcultures, such as the acrylic nail, to encapsulate the double-sided essence of feminine identity that exists in the form of both societal submission and personal empowerment. Goodman’s works can be found in a number of prestigious collections around the world including the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) in Cape Town, the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), and both the Fondazione Fiera Milano and the Missoni Collection in Milan.

Frances Goodman presents a new and experimental body of work, born out of the artist’s most recent art residency at Sundaymorning@ekwc in Oisterwijk (The Netherlands) in 2021, which in many ways represents the culmination of Goodman’s lengthy experimentations with various mediums and ongoing interrogations around identity. A new material has entered into the artist’s oeuvre: clay. It is gloopy with glossy varnishes showcasing Goodman’s masterful transformation of the materials with which she works — having previously metamorphosed acrylic nails into sculpture and sequins into imagery — now, glazed ceramics have been shaped into her distinct plastic-evoking dazzle.

Frances Goodman’s practice is anchored in extensive experimentations with material, the unfurling of conceptual ideas, a profound sense of irony, and the pushing of boundaries. The works have a characteristic twofoldness about them, simultaneously evoking that which is modular and monolithic, disposable and valuable, hand-made and synthetic — and most recently, intersecting masculine and feminine. Goodman’s work is punctuated with opposition and contrasting notions, lending each artwork its ironic sharpness.

This new ceramic body of work is particularly audacious and unruly — for at its core is a deep questioning around norms, both societal and artistic. Goodman has laboriously constructed two mammoth artworks titled ‘Size Queen’ and ‘Crowning Glory’ showcasing the artist’s current explorations — extending the bounds of her previously used artistic processes, namely stitching (sequins) and gluing (acrylic nails), to the hand-coiling of clay. These free-standing ceramic sculptures each tower over two metres tall and we undoubtedly recognise something in their form: a pair of goliath fake nails. Goodman has shifted away from the intricacies of former processes with these bold and monolithic pieces, which rather than seeking to repurpose the disposable acrylic nail, create the allusion of it, assiduously built with the artist’s new-found medium.

Rather than organic and earthy, the clay has been dressed up in glazes that imitate the syrupy lustre of nail varnish. The latter a throwback to previous bodies of work as Goodman has used nail varnish and the fake nail itself as mediums for almost a decade — tracing back to the solo exhibition ‘Cars and Girls’ held in 2013 (WHATIFTHEWORLD Gallery). The nail has been colossally proportioned with these latest works however and the artist elaborates that “it would have been easier for me to make something modular. Then repeat it and repeat it. But why would I do that? I already know how to do that.” Goodman sought to advance the limits of her own artistic know-how whilst questioning the very norms that exist within popular subcultures by building these extravagant Monuments to Waste.

Goodman has long since been obsessed with ‘throwaway’ objects. Her frequent use of consumable materials speaks not only to pre-existing societal associations but to wasteful consumerism as the artist transfigures that which is disposable into artwork. ‘Size Queen’ and ‘Crowning Glory’ push this notion further as Goodman incorporates a more sustainable medium into her practice, whilst still mimicking the artificial and factory-made essence of her previous works. These Monuments to Waste, although erected from a sturdier earthy substance, are hollow inside and stand perhaps as monuments to nothingness itself — echoing the subtle emptiness of the industry to which Goodman refers and the mass-produced and single-use army of beauty paraphernalia at its core. The latter undoubtedly existing at the centre of the artist’s own corpus. ‘’My creative world is so plastic and artificial, I wanted to know what would happen if I were to challenge myself by going for something earthy — what could I achieve with it?’’ says Goodman, defying ceramic norms and extending her own artistic expertise. ‘Size Queen’ and ‘Crowning Glory’ epitomise just that by exploring non-traditional techniques and representations around clay, stretched to its limits in scale, appearance, and association.

The artist converts disposable ready-mades into objects of value — dressed up in pomp and glamour, they become precious and seemingly lavish. ‘Size Queen’ and ‘Crowning Glory’ have been dubbed royal. They stand totemic and regnant. Monuments of veneration, admiration, even trepidation. Size plays an imperative role in this recent body of work — revealing Goodman’s technical ambitions to master a new medium and accentuating any symbolic associations attached to the ambiguously rendered objects. These works are colossal and architectonic. Almost sarcophagal and far from being merely sculptural, they tower as undeniable icons of femininity from the past half-century. Emblematic of what? Perhaps the powerful allure of feminine beauty and our abject devotion to it. Goodman has given scale and materiality to this tiny object, the coffin-shaped layer of plastic that is the acrylic nail, and added a corpulent dimension to her practice after so many years of working with disposable and featherweight objects. ‘Size Queen’ and ‘Crowning Glory’ perhaps echo the very struggle of identity itself, feminine or other, which cannot exist in isolation from that which surrounds us. Monuments to identity, these phallic and bejewelled forms stand as intersections between masculine and feminine. The titles themselves are erotically charged and suggestive. Goodman’s work has always appeared monstrously over-gendered and although previously associated with a specifically feminine representation, the artist’s oeuvre has broadened with this technical and conceptual tour de force. The pearlescent surfaces draw the viewer in, bedazzling them with each embellishment — a studded mask or garish crown for a hollow space in which darker and less glamorous themes lie.

Like many of us, multidisciplinary artist Frances Goodman has spent a lot of time within the confines of her own home since March earlier this year. Forced to utilise the resources at her disposal, the works that she has created for her newest solo exhibition, Uneventful Days, are in many ways restricted by the disruptions of lockdown – limited access to materials, isolation from people, and the four walls of her home studio.

Yet, despite being borne of limitation, the pieces for Uneventful Days don’t take the inconveniences of the pandemic as their fulcrum. In Bodies in Lockdown, a series of new sequin paintings, figures in various states of undress are presented in all their resplendent imperfection. Given shelter-in-place instructions and social distancing etiquette, the source images for the series had to be obtained in a different way than usual: In an effort to seek collaboration in isolation, and rather than photographing them herself, Goodman asked participants to provide her with self portraits that responded to their perceived relationship with their bodies during lockdown, at a time when they are no longer deemed safe or strong.

Interviews conducted over Zoom allowed contributors to explain, in their own words, why they chose to participate in the project, to represent themselves in such a revealing and candid manner. The images Goodman received were anything but vulnerable or defenceless – rich, full-colour, graphic, and self-assured portraits flooded into her inbox, each one destined for a large-scale interpretation in glittering, plastic sequins. Forming a departure from the studied poses of previous sequin paintings, Bodies in Lockdown presents selfies as seduction, selfies as high art, selfies as protest. Both ordinary and one of a kind, these are representations that are simultaneously rooted in idleness and agency, in the spirit of body positivity and no fucks given. They provide a glimpse into the lives and mindsets of those who offered them, at a time when they have the spare hours in uneventful days to reflect.

Faye Janet Jackson

2013-2022, Acrylic nails, glue, polyurethane 

Individually, each artificial fingernail used by Frances Goodman is a rigid, temporary, and dispensable object. But, when combined, the artist is capable of conjuring organic, seemingly living forms that defy their inanimate composition. Orgyliscious and Comfortable Entanglement (2019) take on the contours of a serpentine mating game, multiple attenuated bodies entangled in an ecstatic orgy.

While they appear sumptuous and seductive, the sheer variety of bright colours and tendrils result in an appearance that is somewhat frightening – these works possess a definite venomous quality, their shapes and shades confronting the viewer like a vivid warning sign. The term ‘aposematism’ refers to the appearance of an animal that warns its predators of its toxic nature. It's advertising, in a way, for something that is beautiful, but inherently dangerous.

Goodman’s use of acrylic fingernails references this kind of intoxicating menace. Despite being an extension of the quintessentially attractive female body, nails can scratch and draw blood, especially during the throes of passion (or death). Orgyliscious and Comfortable Entanglement allude to this aggressive feminine archetype, their brightly-coloured scales a metaphor for the woman Goodman seeks to make work about and for: “alluring, repellant, sexual, and abject.”

Fay Jackson

Using the desiring and desired body as a springboard, Goodman employs the familiar image of a woman’s disembodied mouth in her series of relief works titled “Lip Glitz”. We recognise these discarnate lips – plump and glossy – from the position they occupy on billboards, movie posters, and in magazine advertisements. They are, in essence, the signifier of the desirable body, the ultimate symbol of suggestive sensuality.

Yet Goodman’s sequinned lips flash and shimmer, refusing to hold their form. By hand-stitching the glittering bits of plastic side-by-side, exploiting their multitude of colours in a painterly manner, the image shimmers and refracts light, decomposing and reconstructing itself before the viewer’s eyes.

Both through their suggestive titles and their scale, ‘Gold Licker” and ‘Taffy Tease” draw deeply from their borrowed visual language of the ‘hyper-feminine’, amplifying it to the point that they become disproportionately provocative; almost vulgar. While the mainstream media tends to reduce a woman to a singular idea or construct, and often to a disembodied body part, mouths are perhaps the most dangerous of these likenesses. They can talk back, they can bite. As much as mouths and lips can exude sensuality, they are also vessels of fury and hunger, threatening to devour.

Fay Jackson

Photographs of men Goodman knows become the source material for a series of new Eyelash Drawings. Individual false lashes curl across the pages of the six nude portraits she has created, mimicking body hair in a way that is both delightful in its delicate replication of this ostensibly masculine trademark, and mildly revulsive in its pseudo-abjection. These new Eyelash Drawings are sensitive and painstaking renditions of a practice that reverses one of art’s history’s most long-standing power structures: the male gaze. They carry with them the history of the reclining nude, the still life, and the woman as object, directly opposing the male gaze by replacing that object with the male body.

These clots of brightly coloured fabric offer an amiable appearance, however, on closer inspection, the open mouth of Dead Weight, a new textile sculpture, reveals that it’s composed of hundreds if not thousands of men’s neckties. Relics from the days when they were a symbol of power, a Don Draper-esque indicator of social status, Goodman collected the now-discarded ties she used for this work from thrift store bargain bins.

Like an overripe fruit, Dead Weight splits at the seams, rendered bloated and obsolete. Gone are the days when wearing a necktie to work was a dress code requirement. Gone too are the days when being dressed was a requirement for work, now that the pandemic has forced many of us to work from home. While office buildings sit empty, this artefact of the modern workplace succumbs to its own weight, swelling and softening like a body, surrounded by images of bodies in their own homes – vulnerable, defenceless, uninhibited, powerful.

2015-2016

Sequins, beads, thread, fabric.

In the Randela series, Goodman’s simultaneous allusion to, and rejection of, consumerism conflates seemingly disparate ideas. The work draws upon aspects of commercial production through seriality, repetition and the removal of the artist’s hand (the tapestries are outsourced to a local female artisan). Yet, the strong emphasis on craft – its qualities of uniqueness, individuality and the laborious process of production – resists standardised claims. Instead, the series juxtaposes democratic aspirations, fostered by the allure of the ‘rainbow nation’ ideal, and the grim reality majority of South Africans face: a chimeric future where all that glitters is certainly not gold.

False Eyelashes, Methyl Cellulose, Paper

Frances Goodman’s Tinder Dick Pics are an extension of her Eyelash Drawing series. Each work begins with an uninvited dick pic the artist encounters on the dating app Tinder. After screen-grabbing the image, she meticulously draws a portrait of the dick pic with false eyelashes. Goodman removes the men from the image, leaving only a disembodied, floating, usually-erect penis. Her dexterity with false eyelashes reveals itself in the painstaking renderings of unique curves, wrinkles, bumps, and bulges. She titles each work with the name, age, and distance she was from the Tinder user at the time she encountered the photo.

Her deft use of materials and the arduous, time-consuming nature of the project inverts the quickie, one-off, anonymous brevity of a Swipe Left. The Tinder Dick Pics confront the over-exposure of internet culture and the aggressive sexuality found in online dating communities. These dick pics were not sent to Goodman directly, but selected by men as their online avatars. In keeping with the techniques of her practice at large, Goodman’s detailed portraits wrest control from the men who lead with their dicks rather than their faces, and regains control from their invasion into her digital space. 

Jennie Lamensdorf

Made for her 2017 Beneath Her exhibition, Comfort Her continues Goodman’s ongoing conversation around female identity and autonomy, this time considering the notion of ‘the surface’, and what lies beneath. For the purposes of the exhibition, the surface not only refers to the skin, it also alludes to the way a woman presents herself to the world, the image she wishes to portray and the lengths she will go to maintain and perfect the exterior; whilst the ‘beneath’ is both the flesh and bones under the skin as well as the complexity of character and the time, effort and exertion that goes into the ‘making’ of a woman.

Goodman has chosen to work with an array of historical crafting techniques such as quilting, crochet and embroidery to explore these motifs. However, she has taken these traditionally homely and domestic pastimes and has, in keeping with historical and present feminist craft art practices, subverted them.

Comfort Her, a monolithic blanket that both towers above the viewer whilst also sinking onto the floor, is the culmination of months of intensive crocheting wool of red and maroon hues, is more likely to swallow or smother the viewer than it is to console, warm and caress.

Lady Garden plays with the cliché of the flower as a symbol of femininity and innocence, however Goodman’s flowers have cavernous throats and protruding tongues and create an uncomfortable push-pull between the seductiveness of the shiny, slick flower forms and the visceral, abject nature of the false nails from which they are made.

Goodman once again examines the impact and influences the media and the film industry has on the formation of desire and desirability through repetition in her two dramatically different sequin series.  We are all familiar with the disembodied glossy, luscious, lips that are plastered across billboards and magazines. They are in essence the signifier of the desirable body: the unattainable, mirage of perfection that teases and taunts us.  Goodman’s sequin lips ripple and shimmer, refusing to hold their form, whilst remaining disembodied (w)holes: they are both iconic and ironic.  Just as lipstick is applied to be smudged off, the image does not hold.

2013, Neon, 150 x 100cm

Spit/Swallow (2013) is an iconic work from Goodman’s oeuvre that exemplifies her areas of interest. The neon light work, which has recently been acquired by the PAMM collection in Miami, depicts a self-portrait of the artist with a fluid-like shape that flashes alternatively inside her mouth and being ejected from it. For an uncomplicated and aesthetically candid work, Spit/Swallow is capable of addressing a multitude of themes present in Goodman’s practice, including self-portraiture, seduction, subversion, humour, violence, and the thin line that exists between desire and disgust.

Spit/Swallow is envisioned as a metaphoric play on female stereotypes: women who swallow their words, accepting what is given to them and expected of them, or women who spit out their thoughts and feelings, who reject societal expectations and norms. The interplay between this and the obvious sexual innuendo – referring to whether or not a woman swallows semen upon performing fellatio – results in a work that seeks to address contemporary feminine identity. Spit/Swallow represents a power-play between embracing and rejecting morality, societal norms, and desire as they are presented in the media and popular and mainstream culture.

The artist's use of the tongue-in-cheek title acts as a reinforcing component that drives home her feminist principles; the double entendre illustrating how women waver between submission and rebellion, reception and effusion.

Fay Jackson

2014, False Eyelashes, Glue, Paper, Average size 20 x 30cm

2014, Reflective Print on Perspex with Diamantes, 100 x 90cm

Deconstructed Car Seats, Earrings, Pearls, Chains, Glue

Fake it Til You Make It (2019), a modified car seat embellished with the words of the work’s title, calls to mind early erotic experiences in the back seats of cars: fumbling, frantic, often ultimately futile. The sculptural relief work employs fake pearls, diamantés, earrings, pocket change, necklaces, and a spare key to spell out words evocative of those that might be exchanged during transactions between teenage sweethearts, sex worker and client, or otherwise forbidden lovers.

This glittering array of now redundant items, which may have been dropped between the seats and left behind during these backseat love affairs, become metaphors for loss and letting go. The car as a metaphor for sexuality isn’t an unfamiliar one – we’ve all heard the big-car-small-dick jokes, or recognise what someone really means when they ask if you’re up for a ‘joyride’. The unmistakably sticky leatherette of the car seat references this language, recalling a space where women's bodies have been subject to varying degrees of violence, exploitation, pleasure, and even empowerment.

Now empty of the bodies that occupied it, the back seat becomes a space of both desire and disgrace, a place that resonates as private and romantic and lewd and public all at once. The interplay of the English aphorism, Fake It Til You Make It, shifts between its definition of “imitating confidence, competence, or optimism in order to realise those qualities in real life,” and a reference to the female orgasm (or lack thereof). Goodman uses these words, a well-worn and pithy observation, to interrogate desire, the loss of innocence, and what there is to be gained (or lost) through experience.

Fay Jackson

Car Bonnets, Pop Rivets, LED Lights and Diamantes

The Revenge series plays with the stereotype of the emotional, unpredictable, irrational and impulsive woman, whilst also reducing men to the cliché of "you are what you drive" – the hoods become an avatar, the extension of the male ego. 

2010, Silk, lace, organza, satin, beads and embroidery thread installation with sound (14’36 and 5’21), Dimensions variable, Edition 1/2

In The Dream, Frances Goodman examines the issues of marriage and aging, and the pressures women feel are placed on them to conform to societal expectations of them and for them. The work is made of meters and meters of draped satin, silk and organza hanging in cascades from the ceiling, forming a massive cloud or baldachin that collapses to the floor. The installation is accompanied by a sound track compromised of dozens of interviews with unmarried women.

The piece uses the interviews to focus on the envy women sometimes feel in the face of societal pressure and expectations that not only do they marry, but also that they marry before a certain age, before it is ‘too late’. Constant comparisons in regard to looks, age, independence and success feed their anxieties, and reveals that not only do they desire and anticipate ‘the perfect wedding’, but that they are also plagued by uncertainties and fears of not being led to the alter and having to live alone, whilst still trying to be modern, independent, liberated women.

Adapted from a text by Monique Meyer

Confetti installation, 2011, Dimensions variable

A room filled with mountains of confetti cut into the word “forever”.

2011, Beads, sequins, diamantes, organza, embroidery thread, Dimensions variable
Unique

“Married to” consists of individually woven beads, sequins and diamantes onto a fine surface of gauze like substance called organza.  Floating behind glass in boxed frames the pieces, which take between two to three weeks to complete, are inspired by the shapes of the bodices of wedding dresses, that upon closer inspection reveal intricate icons and objects related to the subservient role and commodification the rest of Goodman’s work hinges on.

In the work “Married to Social Media” symbols of Twitter, Skype and Facebook are decoratively combined; whilst in other examples such as “Married to Sex” a nude female form makes up the erotically charged image, alluding to the demarcated space for women in the institution of marriage.  In “Married to Football” team crests such as FC Barcelona, Liverpool and Pirates are intricately and painstakingly embroidered onto the surface. 

What these works effectively critique are the hetero-normative standards of what marriage represents, directly representing the accoutrements that a woman is to aspire to, and metaphorically ‘wear’ through the course of her union.

Adapted from a text by Mathew Partridge.

In the middle of a space lined in black velvet is a white fridge, its door slightly ajar, its shelves pristine and empty.  A gentle new-age voice  offers tips and affirmations - "Never eat in secret", "munch on ice-cubes" - which are superimposed on another voice, barely audible, that reads a letter to Ana.

The sound installation is an investigation of eating disorders, and the subcultures they have produced. The tips and letters recited in the work come from websites that ‘Pro-Ana’, (pro anorexia) girls host online. There exists within the work a reference to addiction, but in this instance the emphasis is on deprivation, rather than indulgence, which intimates that there is a certain amount of luxury implicit in choosing not to eat.

2008-9, Molecular Structures, Crystal Beads, pins, needles, steel, polystyrene, Dimensions Variable

"What a drag it it getting old...

Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she's not really ill
There's a little yellow pill
She goes running fo the shelter
Of a mother's little helper
And it helps her on her way
Gets her through her busy day" 

(Taken from the Rolling Stones' song, "Mother's little helper")

Sound Installation, 2007

"In today's highly specialized and complex society, modern Man comes into contact with more people in one day than our ancestors did in a lifetime. It has become necessary to speed up the process of attachments, and it is more difficult to develop meaningful relationships.... Loneliness is not knowing others: it is not being known by others.... [Pets] permit their owners to be themselves so that they can risk self-disclosure and form attachments." Psychologist Judy Harris http://www.animaltherapy.net/Premise%20&%20Promise.html

“No Ordinary Love” is a large-scale installation that both explores the relationships people have with their pets and interrogates the voyeurism implicit in watching and listening to people who are obsessed with their pets. 

 I am interested in this subject as I believe many of these relationships are indicative of a society that is so fast-paced and result driven that people feel left behind, isolated and often very alone.  People find it hard to build strong, deep bonds with others because the structures for interaction are anonymous and fleeting.  The act of ‘humanising’ a pet in order to have that link, that bond that people so desperately need, lays bear a failure or a gap in today’s society: where people feel let down, or abandoned by others and seek solace in the unconditional love and affection of their animals. 

2004, Silk, embroidery, wire, embroidered satin cushion, glass box and wooden plinth, Life size

The starting point for the series of work is a text written by George Bataille on flowers, coupled with the provoking image of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’s novel “Great Expectations”.

Bataille writes:

“… The flower is betrayed by the fragility of its corolla:  thus, far from answering the demands of human ideas, it is the sign of their failure.  In fact after a very short period of glory the marvelous corolla rots indecently in the sun, thus becoming, for the plant, a garish withering.  Risen from the stench of the manure pile – even though it seemed for a moment to have escaped it in a flight of angelic and lyrical purity – the flower seems to relapse abruptly into its original squalor…flowers wither like old and overly made-up dowagers, and they die ridiculously on stems that seem to carry them to the clouds…

It seems, in fact, that desire has nothing to do with ideal beauty, or more precisely, that it only arises in order to stain and with the beauty that for many sad and well-ordered personalities is only a limit, a categorical imperative.”

And Dickens introduces Miss Havisham as follows:

“…I knocked, and was told from within to enter…

She was dressed in rich materials – satins, lace, and silks – all of white.  Her shoes were white.  And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white… she had not finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on – the other was on the table near her hand – her veil was but half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace from her bosom lay with those trinkets…all confusedly heaped about the looking-glass.

It was not in the first moments that I saw all these things, though I saw more of them in the first moments than might be supposed.  But, I saw that everything within my view, which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its luster, and was faded and yellow.  I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.  I saw that the dress had been put on the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure on which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and bone…”

 Both reference the decay of flowers, the withering of an ideal.

Flowers are often used to symbolize love and ideal beauty.  They are used extravagantly at weddings and funerals alike and always appear to represent some kind of considerate or emotive gesture.  But the moment being investigated is the death of the flower, or rather the moment when the beauty fades, and the decay begins.

 The flowers are made of silk and other opulent materials and are realistic, delicate and detailed.  On second glance, however, the greens are faded and the whites yellowed. The flowers have begun to droop and the petals to fall.  The natural progression of things is thus suspended forever, not at the flower’s glorious peak, but rather at its disappointing decline.  They hover eternally between life and death, immortalized as a moment passed. They represent the refusal to let go of or abandon an ideal even when things will never be the same again, when all is really lost.

Each flower is placed delicately on a cream silk cushion and is cased in glass.  The flowers are named after the emotions or ideals they represent - orchids=beauty, lilies=purity etc.

Sequins, Embroidery thread, Satin, Hardboard, Sizes vary

Goodman’s new sculptures are an extension of her interest in language, and focus on how we ‘read’ objects. There is a play between text and texture, surface and content, sincerity and irony.  The obsessively worked and highly decorative sequined surfaces declare a gaudy shallowness, which seems at odds with the sincerity of the bodybuilder’s life affirmations.

DVD Installation, Projector, Amplifier, DVD Player, 4 Speakers, Size Variable

“Young Guns” accompanies two modern-day heroes on their quest for perfection and ideal beauty.

“Young Guns” is a large-scale DVD installation comprising image and an audio soundtrack.  Accompanied by visuals of the young men executing formal competitive poses, an audio-track examines the controversial and much-maligned sport of bodybuilding.  A soundscape of music, interviews and recordings of training sessions capture the two young bodybuilders’ passion for the sport and reveal the obsessive extremes to which they will go in order to reach their goals.

Through the young guns’ accounts of childhood heroes and icons, a particular version of masculinity emerges. And as the narrative unfolds, the viewer becomes aware of a blurring of boundaries between scrupulous preparation and raw narcissism.  This slip between definition of self and judgment by others raises questions around contemporary ‘ideals’ of beauty and the limits to achieving them. 

Embroidery thread, Satin, Embroidery hoop 
Sizes vary

In this body of work, Frances Goodman has embroidered public toilet graffiti onto silk.

These toilet philosophies, boasts, confessions and rants are reworked into seemingly precious objects, which are at odds with the sometimes lewd and throwaway content. The labour and intensity of hand-embroidering these anonymous, dirty ‘nothings’, reveal a voyeuristic fascination with other people’s sordid fantasies and inner monologues. 

Sound Installation, 2007, Speakers, DVD players, Amplifiers, Installation Variable

“I know what you’re thinking…” is a sound installation that examines the very act of judging others. From the endless comments and quips on any number of topics, to the anonymous protagonists in the work, all expose society’s dual fascination and revulsion with others. When people are not constrained by expected politeness and sensitivity, we are all, potentially, the subject of someone else’s prejudice.

“… [in] I Know What You're Thinking, [Goodman’s] interrogation of bigotry is formally expanded to include the voices of a diverse range of actors, and maintains its edge because it allows the inflections of these voices to colour its content. So, voices that sound variously Black, so-called 'Coloured', White, European, and even camp, speak reverbed phrases of shocking yet not entirely surprising generalising intolerance. Urban legend-style ideas, like 'coloured women have their front teeth removed so they can give better blowjobs', 'prostitutes are responsible for the spread of HIV in the world', 'German men want to fuck black chicks', softly fill this space from different directions, at any one moment competing for one's attention.

The sounds emanate from craftily unassuming white canvas pillars, specially made to mimic the structural pillars of the gallery; yet it appears to come from nowhere, as if one had entered a realm where one is privy to the most private thoughts of other individuals. Goodman speaks of these sentences as the kinds of things many people in the contemporary moment do actually think but would never publicly own up to. One phrase ties many of the rest together, indicating a deep resistance to change and skepticism about social integration: 'I'm trying to be a good New South African, but it's really hard...'. The mix of voyeurism and implication in this work is powerful because it is at once amusing and unsettling.” 

Quoted from Michael Smith’s Review on Artthrob.  Issue #118_06.07 www.artthrob.co.za

2004-2005, Glass Beads, Cotton, Sequins, Material, Stuffing, Hardboard, Sizes Vary

The “Bead Series” are a number of wall sculptures constructed of heavily embroidered beadwork.  Each convex oval has words describing an emotion sewn onto it with beads and sequins.  Examples are:  "Blinding Love", "Spitting Anger", "Bruised Ego", "Seething Resentment", "Raw Emotion", "Sucking Energy", "Gushing Sympathy", "Paralyzing Fear", "Burning Desire" and "Cloying Sweetness". 

Each emotion (a noun) is described by an adjective that would usually be used in a relation to a bodily function or response.   Thus the emotions become more than a feeling, they are presented as a physical manifestation. Describing one's emotions in this way suggests that the emotion is no longer enough in it self, it needs to be exaggerated and justified in the way the body reacts to it or expresses it. 

 The obsessive, repetitive nature of the production of the work and the richness, the shininess, the opulence of the materials used, reveals the dramatization of emotions for what they really are.  They become a dressing up, rather than a paring down, a boastful vanity rather than a humble internalization.  The time involved in making such urgent declarations of extreme emotion calls the emotions themselves into question.  Urgency becomes labored, angst becomes considered, experiencing emotion becomes an obsession.

2003, Photograph, Audio Monologue, Dimensions Variable 

 “… You and You II  (2003) [are] two large dark circular photographic portraits of a man and woman, accompanied by audio monologues.  As you stare into the dark orb of the portrait, you lose yourself in a poetic string of naked confessions: ‘You make me believe I am lost without you. You make me greedy for your attention.  You make me want to consume your identity.  You make my heart sink deeper into the abyss every time I go to bed alone…’

The female lover details the stream of obsessive thoughts that grip her being in a state of pathological love.  The seductiveness of the voice and the dark sexiness of the image invite you to feel the weak-kneed surrender of desire.  But at the same time the words awaken logic and disturbing phrases provoke an interrogation of powerlessness, puncturing the spell of romance.”

Alex Dodd, Art South Africa, Vol 03, Issue 04, Winter 2005 

In a room painted black, on the wall opposite the door, hangs a single circular mirror.  A set of headphones hangs beneath the mirror.  As one moves closer and sits in front of the image, the blackness of the mirror seems somehow deeper than the surface on which the reflection lies - the result of reflective glass and light, rather than an actual mirror.  On staring at the image reflected in the glass a second portrait emerges from the blackness behind.

Through the headphones a sultry voice whispers secrets to the viewer.   The voice repetitively addresses the viewer as “you” which, along with the reflection, forces the viewer to become the unavoidable subject of the piece.

2000, Audio Monologue, Audio Tracks, Walkmans, Headphones, Red Plastic Chairs, Dimensions Variable 

“In Voice of Reason (2000) we listen to the artist’s monologues as she observes people’s behaviors in public spaces: eating in restaurants, sharing cutlery, sleeping in other people’s beds. The extreme sense of self-consciousness the artist incites through her meticulous observations of these everyday, mundane events questions the fine line between routine and obsession; interactions in public spaces are recorded as moments of risk where we are exposed to the ‘dirt’ of strangers. Artist and audience alike operate as both phobic subject and studied object. On the surface, it is the bodily threat of infection by strangers, of contamination by others’ germs that is feeding the artist’s neurotic contemplations. But this ‘surface’ holds a far darker subtext: threatened body in threatening space reveals the way prejudice, resentment and fear is inscribed on both body and psyche.

In this sense, ‘dirt’ is political. It speaks of an abject presence, of an anomalous ‘in-betweeness’ that shadows the oppositions and classifications we rely on to maintain a sense of cohesive self. Us/Them; In/Out; You/Me: things fall apart. Our fear of dirt (of pollution) is a fear of disorder within the structures of culture and society that allow us to make meaning.” 

David Brodie

2004-2005, Sound Installation, Dimensions Variable

 “…She started making a veil, embroidered with silk and tiny pearls.  I would find her bent over it in the small hours of the night, squinting at the mass of frothy white, yellowed in the poor light.  She would mutter to herself, and I could hear the words ‘perfect’ and ‘happy’, and ‘oh what a day’…” 

“…I wander round the apartment calculating again and again what should be multiplied and what added.  Mad mathematics in my head…”

“…I remember how her hair would blow across her face and catch on the wetness of her lipstick and she would pull the wayward strands back behind her ear, only to have the wind blow it free again…”

"Table for Three" is a four track sound piece, which makes use of a number of components in order to mimic an everyday restaurant setting.  The ambient sounds taken from a restaurant as well as the tables set the scene.  However, the sounds in the space, as well as the abandoned tables, give a feeling of emptiness. There are three sets of headphones in the space, one at each seat of the table; the listener has to sit down to put them on.  When the headphones are put on the listener is able to hear the thoughts of one of the absent people at the table.  The thoughts do not necessarily relate to the meal itself, they are internal thoughts, narrative in nature. Each narrative references a female character or scenario from one of the books of Dickens, Bronte and Woolf (Great Expectations, Wuthering Heights and Mrs. Dalloway), although in each case the characters are in some way inverted.

One of the pervading themes of the different monologues is the slip between the expectations of others, and one's own desires and dreams.  All three characters in the work are confronted with a moment of choice, a choice that (they believe) will affect their position as women within the confines of society.

The monologues are constructed in a personal and intimate way, yet they all only give a snippet of an experience, one interpretation of a set of events.   There is a certain ambiguity in the piece as a whole - it never becomes clear whether the different women are thinking about each other, if their meeting triggers their thoughts, or how complicit they are in the events of each other’s lives.  One’s interpretation will also depend on how much time is given to the piece.  Each set of headphones only holds the thoughts of one of the women, so to listen to only to one set will only give one point of view.  And yet, if one listens to all three, the situation will still never be fully explained and resolved.  The sum of the parts does not necessarily equal the whole.

2003-2004, Sound Installation, Surround Sound Speakers, Sound System, Mirrors and Wooden Flooring, Dimensions Variable

“I finally went to see David.  I’ve been putting it off for a while; I know I shouldn’t because I don't think he gets many visitors.  He sits in his room overlooking the train station, waiting I think, although he would never admit it.  I always find him in the same seat, the pale grey, foam sofa bed, probably from Ikea or somewhere as innocuous. He never comes to the door because it goes without saying it will always be open...”

A woman pays a visit to David, her unattainable Adonis. The stark contrast of the reality of his grey world and the bright, mirrored cacophony of his dreams casts the viewer into the loop in which they are both trapped.  

“David” seeks to examine the emptiness of various unobtainable ideals: those of the body, the dream, beauty and love.

“David” is an audio-based narrative installed in a space made to resemble a gym hall.  The viewer enters a room of wall-to-wall mirrors and sprung wooden flooring.  A number of headphones hang from the ceiling. The only light source in the room is the light reflecting off a still mirror ball. The sound piece comprises, music, found audio sound-bites and narrative, which transport the viewer to the world of David and his anonymous guest.

Soft Sculpture, Handbags, Carrier Bags, Material, Cotton, Varying sizes

The layered works of StealthWealth are the authentic shopping bags of fashion boutiques, which Goodman has upholstered, using and morphing the materials of the fake designer handbags of the same label. These grotesque hybrids are a study of the in transience of brand loyalty, in a recessionary context in which certain high-end outlets have actually stopped marking their carrier bags as a response to their customers reluctance to be seen consuming.

2003, Papiermache Sculptures and Sound, Sculptures, Walkmans, Sound Equipment, Dimensions Variable

“She fled the room after checking to make sure that no one had seen her, that there were no witnesses to the foul deed she had just committed.  She smiled to herself, thinking that she was safe.  That she could walk away with her secret tucked behind her air of nonchalance.  But there were onlookers.  They had no voice, just the capacity to carry the gravity of her act with them for always.  The door handle she had wiped clean, the curtain she had pulled back to make sure no one was lurking outside, the mirror she had given a collusive wink; they had all seen and they all knew.”

To remember a fleeting moment of the day when lying in bed just after you turn the light out.  To recall an incident to a friend, only to forget it five minutes later.  To find yourself smiling on the bus at something you have remembered for the first time in years.  All of these constitute our histories and our personal memories.  And each memory is made up of hundreds of random, obscure objects. Therefore every object has a history.  Yet they have no capacity for recollection due to their very inanimate nature.

This series of work explores the notion that an object has the potential to have a voice, that it has the capacity to tell it’s own story. A number of writers, from many different backgrounds, were invited to collaborate on the project.  People were asked to choose an everyday object and write its history.   The objects were then reconstructed out of papier-mâché and a suitable voice found.

The people who collaborated on the project are:

[‘aisikl] -  ‘u’

Neil Dundas  - Half Jack

Anthony Goodman - Incident on a Welsh Beach

Peter Lemmens  - The Plastic Bag

Richard Penn - The Window People and On Guilt and Divine Judgement

Jennifer Ritchie - The Water Cooler

Nedko Solakov - The Toothbrush

you

2003, Hand Printed Book, Hand-made box, Edition of 25, 21,5 x 14,5 x 5,5cm

“you” is a series of hand-printed cards, presented in a hand-made box. Simple, yet resonating, declarations are printed on each of the loose cards in the box. Each card begins with the word ‘you’, which forces the viewer to become the unavoidable subject of the piece.

I keep trying...

2002,  Hand-printed, Hand-Bound Book, Edition of 24, 21cm x 12.5cm x 1.5cm

“A fictional young woman endlessly tells us stories from her life in which she “keeps trying” to adapt her behaviour in order to either gain approval, or to alter someone else’s behaviour towards her.  She seems trapped within a never-ending cycle of dissatisfaction mixed with self-revelatory realisations, through which her identity is reformed and re-structured.”  Ros Carter,

 When installed the chairs are arranged in the circular formation commonly used within therapy or self-help groups.  The viewer is invited to participate in the work by sitting on the chairs and listening to the series of confessional stories, which are played through loudspeakers, positioned over the various seats.

Wanting

2004, Hand-printed, Hand-Bound Book, Edition of 24, 21cm x 12.5cm x 1.5cm

“Wanting” is the final work in the trilogy of books and installations comprising “I keep trying”, “you” and now “Wanting”. 

“Wanting” examines the final stages of a relationship, when the love has turned to hate, when one is suffocating and suffering.

The embossed, invisible writing of the book makes it difficult for the viewer to read the text due to the interference of the world outside.  The work is silent, yet the thoughts expressed are strong and provocative.  They expose the deep violent emotions that are generally hidden, that are not acted upon.