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PLEXUS COLLECTIVE EXHIBITION 2019 Plexus Art Collective curated by Anne Marie Keaveney – Group Exhibition – Sculpture & Collage, Starve, 2019 Dough, plastic food wrap POISON, 2019 MAGAZINE IMAGES, FLOUR, WATER PURGE I & II, 2019 MAGAZINE IMAGES, PLASTIC SHEETING “Unfortunately, the beauty backlash is spread and reinforced by the cycles of self-hatred provoked in women by the advertisements, photo features, and beauty copy in the glossies.... It promises to tell women what men truly want, what faces and bodies provoke men’s fickle attentions - a seductive promise in an environment in which men and women rarely get to talk about what each really desires... The magazines are not oracles speaking for men. Indeed, as one study found, “our data suggest women are misinformed and exaggerate the magnitude of thinness men desire... they are misinformed, probably as a result of promotion of thinness in women through advertising in the diet industry. What editors are obliged to appear to say that men want from women is actually what their advertisers want from women” - Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth Unfortunately, nearly 30 years after The Beauty Myth was first published, the direct correlation and negative feedback loop still exists between advertising imagery usedto sell beauty and fashion products and the proliferation of eating disorders, plastic surgery and body dysmorphia, and has even further developed into the normalisation of injectable fillers, filtered selfies and private photo editing. This work reflects on the low level anxiety of constantly counting calories, thinking about eating or not eating, obsessing over pounds gained or lost, and the constant mental comparisons to the internalised images of “perfect bodies” used by the advertising industry to keep women in a constant state of fear... so that they will buy their latest products. Plexus Art Collective is a group of 10 graduates of CEAD at NCAD |
