Spotlight on Alice Finch

Alice Finch

These figurative ceramic pieces and paintings are expressing the complicated relationship between women and the beauty industry. The ropes made of flax are meant to represent a woman’s hair plaited and then utalized by it’s time consuming nature, to bind and restrain the woman from persuing more productive activities.

I found this old fashioned method of advertising with fear still being utalised by cosmetic and fashion companies. The continued pressure for women to perform is cemented in the cultural fibre by increasing the importance of “engineered beauty” and ridiculing public female figures for not attaining the “standard” demanded by the Industry.

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth” Lenin.

This dehumanising of a women’s body into public property has bound the everyday women into a constant battle to maintain a “beauty ideal” or she has failed as a women.

“Men look at women .Women watch themselves being looked at( in modern media)”Critic John Berger.
The option is to opt into the beauty motived crowd or face continuous alienation from the social norm thus creating a perpetual cycle of fear and undermined confidencein the female populace. Although gender roles set by media stereotypes are equally damaging to me , I felt there was a stronger visual to be explored with focusing on female themes.