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January 7 – February 12, 2011
Shary Boyle's Maudlin Miniatures are After my Own Child-Heart
by Meaghan Thurston
I usually withhold this information, but inspired by Canadian artist Shary Boyle I'll come out with an 'uncool' fact about myself: I'm a dollhouse enthusiast. Unlike most of my peers, I spent my pre-teens playing with a dollhouse. Perhaps this is why I can't play the guitar, I don't know how to screen-print, am still catching up on cult movies from the 90s and I've never made a zine. That said, my dollhouse had an amazing collection of miniature items, including working light fixtures. It was also peopled by dolls in historically accurate Victorian costumes, which I made. While Dollhouse Hobbyist is not exactly a peer-respect gaining pursuit, the collection and crafting that goes into dollhouse designing develops certain personal attributes: attention to detail and in my case meticulous sewing techniques, to name a couple. But, there is something eerie about the spirit of the doll's house. Why else do you think Henrik Ibsen called his masterpiece play about smashing traditional roles of men and women in 19th-century marriage, A Doll's' House? Dollhouses represent frozen models of some kind of backward domestic fantasy. But, when I think back to how as an awkward twelve year old, I was more comfortable playing with this elaborate idealized miniature home than with trying to belong to one of the terrifying pre-teen she wolf packs, I don't think it's so strange after all.
While I admit that it might have been better for me to do something slightly less introverted, extreme devotion to the craft of the miniature has produced great results for Canadian Artist Shary Boyle. Her miniature porcelain figure work, one of her many mediums, is executed following Meissen factory techniques developed in Germany in the early 1700s. Ms. Boyle's show Flesh and Blood is now on at Galerie UQAM is a fantasy-fiction come true for her and curator Louise Dery. The show is recognition of her 2009 win of the Iskowitz Prize, which goes to an artist who has made a significant contribution to Canadian art. And the interest curators have taken in Ms. Boyle has also helped spur the spread of her work across the country. The show has already run in Toronto. I'm sorry I missed it because the AGO reinstalled four of its first-floor European galleries to host Ms. Boyle's work, while paintings by the great Masters looked on. Oh, how many times I could have used the favorite word of first year English Literature students, juxtaposition, if I'd reviewed that show! Flesh and Blood will make its way to Vancouver from Montreal.
Her delicately detailed figurines recall Royal Doulton Pretty Ladies, yet BlogTO declared rightly that they "would seem at home on my grandmother's knickknack shelf if it wasn't for all of the monstrous sex."
By Ms. Boyle's hand, the fine craft of porcelain figure making is married with animist mythologies, sexuality, relationships and the dark side of human nature. Some reviews have thus declared that Boyle challenges preconceptions of beauty in her multidisciplinary practice. If anything, like Otto Dix, Ms. Boyle explores the disconnection that exists between the ideal of beauty and the seductiveness and strangeness of the body. Many of the sculptures, paintings and installations on display for the Flesh and Blood exhibit depict characters that would fit right into Lewis Caroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, or perhaps in one of the tales of the Brothers Grimm. I felt the show addressed the subject of childhood fears and fantasies, than questions of beauty. Ms. Boyle speaks in images to human psychology and she is eerily attuned to the most gruesome possible outcomes of human nature. While most of us are familiar with the cliched idea of childhood rebellion against their parents, in Ms. Boyle's figurine Family, she has sculpted a ghastly alternative: two peasant 'parents' sit and watch, campfire style, over the roasting heads of their children. Another figurine, My Funeral, depicts a girl clad in lace, laid out in her coffin (I'm guessing that Boyle is a fan of Lydia from Beetlejuice) She does not shy away from tantalizingly taboo thoughts.
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| Family, porcelain. Photo by Sarah Dea courtesy the Toronto Star |
As a result the separate parts of Flesh and Blood can be labeled by all of the following: beautiful, funny, bizarre and brutally ugly. That's a fair number of conflicting adjectives, but Ms. Boyle's work covers it all.
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| The Lute Player by Shary Boyle on the cover of the Montreal Mirror |
Beautiful: The Lute Player, which I'm sure every rocker girl covets. It graced the cover of the Montreal Mirror, in which Ms. Boyle was quoted as saying with respect to her sculptures that, "They're not just objects that I've made as an artist, they're their own thing, and I'm like, 'I totally respect you.'" She was speaking about her installation/projection Virus (White Wedding), which despite its apparently laborious conception, is mostly interesting for its use and revival of the overhead projector as a gallery-staple. Also something to behold is White Light. Mark Medley writing in the National Post, saw this sculpture 'in the light' described Ms. Boyle's spider-lady best:
Her eyes are piercing, and her mouth is slightly ajar; she looks human, but reptilian, too, with elongated, claw-like feet and fingers. She strikes a pose both sexual and violent. The audience won't be privy to the same level of detail; the sculpture is to be viewed under black light; with the lights off, one can only see the string, her body delineated by the web.
Funny: I'm not sure I would refer to the sex Ms. Boyle exhibits as 'monstrous', however; I thought the installation piece, Scarecrow, was monstrously hilarious. Boyle herself has described it as "sad—but strangely sexy" How can a scarecrow have passionate sex with a woman fashioned of thousands of pieces of celadon porcelain, you ask? Just the mere thought of the mechanics of this unlikely pairing is enough to give me the giggles. And from the "Highland Series," Queens Guard (2007, oil on panel) depicts a shirtless male highland dancer with the foot of his female companion wedged deep into his mouth. I think that one will either make the Scots laugh, or more likely squirm uncomfortably.
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| Queens Guard (2007, oil on panel) |
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| Scarecrow |
Bizarre: While the installations were dramatic, it was her paintings that left more of an impression, particularly two paintings entitled Angel Trumpet Flower of Death and Bloodie is Born and Born Again. The Angel Trumpet Flower is quite literally a 'flower of death' — otherwise known as Brugmansia, these plants contain dangerous levels of poison and may be fatal if ingested. Or, in the world according to Ms. Boyle, send you on an extremely terrifying trip where grisly looking creatures rule the not-so-natural world. If Ms. Boyle's painting doesn't deter you from eating unknown plants, then you deserve what's coming to you. What inspired Bloodie, on the other hand is beyond me, but if you ever played with Barbie dolls, pulled their heads off and reattached them using duck tape, then you'll get the gist of this work.
Brutally Ugly: Beast (2007, oil on panel) stands out in the show like a sore thumb (or a hair-covered thumb?). I did not linger long in front of this unusually ugly portrait which bears a great resemblance to Chewbacca in mid lip-lick. Beast's presence in the show suggests that Ms. Boyle's reputation can withstand such a painting. In fact, her reputation may depend on it.
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| Beast (2007, oil on panel) |
The range of human psychological and emotional states that Ms. Boyle explores is certainly energetic, sometimes allegoric, and yes, probably feminist. In Ms. Boyle, the image of the woman crafter is reinvented. What I took away from the exhibit is that Ms. Boyle's figurines, like my dollhouse, are totems for coping with life's troubles. "Characters are necessary to confront the anger, grief, and helplessness of being alive," Ms. Boyle is quoted as saying in the glossy, 200-page bilingual publication that accompanies the exhibition. After an hour in the presence of her work, I felt that if we'd been 12 year-olds together, Ms. Boyle and I would've made good friends. I'm relieved that she is bringing the practice of miniature sculpting back into the modern spotlight. Dollhouse hobbyist to maudlin miniaturist: I get you Shary Boyle.
