Part 1: Hypocrisy and Hope
Francesca Pullinger started the day off with a theme both relatable and close to home for all of us there as she critiqued Unilever’s contrasting use of the female body in their adverts. Her key focus began on Dove’s campaign for real beauty which is often seen to inspire and empower women, but in reality is simply revealing them to objectification. They continue to follow the age old nude figure of art; hairless, curvy, and slim and uphold “deeply entrenched ideals”, similarly presented in the Lynx advert that Francesca used. It is extremely sexualised imagery with tag lines such as “can she make you lose control?” which has since been banned, and is near impossible to find images of.
Whilst she touched on feminism, homophobia and sexism, she later exploited the language and advertisements used for ‘Fair and Lovely’; the largest skin whitening cream in the world, particularly in India. The idea is that they have no need to cover their face in order to prevent their skin darkening in the sun, instead they can use this product and they will be/remain more desirable. I particularly enjoyed her use of comparison to an old 1884 advert for Pear’s soap, in which a dark skinned child is bathed and exits as a white child. It is a disgusting idea that people should “not be acceptable in [their] natural state”, and Francesca successfully exploited this through the hypocrisy of Unilever’s branding.
The second speaker was Helen Leary, who was particularly engaging but I struggled to understand immediately what the topic and idea of her paper was. After a few confused minutes I became aware that she was talking about Nigerian artists Sokari Douglas Camp, a woman whose artwork focused on the unjust killing of poet, Ken Saro- Wiwa; it involved a memorial bus for him that travelled round just raise awareness, but was also denied entry back into Nigeria at customs due to the political backlash and the overt messages it relayed. On the side of the bus read ‘I accuse the oil companies of practising genocide against the Ogoni’. Not only was this memorial for Saro- Wiwa, but it was also for the historical culture they have lost due to oil companies (Shell) infiltrating their country and destroying its beauty and heritage. It became apparent from Helen’s paper that it was the Nigerian, intergenerational storytelling that aided her work and allowed her to travel internationally with sculpture, artwork and poetry in order to spread the word.
I’ll admit that the following two presentations were interesting as I have researched into those topics myself for assessments and personal interest, but due to this I lacked interest in no one’s fault but my own. One looked into the use of poetry alongside art and how it could be exhibited in the same was as art, in a gallery, available to all, and the second focused primarily on artist Ron Mueck and his hyperrealistic sculptures. I find Mueck a really interesting artist and so have always kept up to date with his work and background.
HXLLISON ART HISTORY 