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ROSINA GODWINArtist and Sculptor

Black (2014)Dyed fabrics, wax and pigment

My work plays with the nurturing associations of textiles, by

juxtaposing beauty with repulsion and contrasting innocence with iniquity.

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The exploration of the boundary between civilisation and anarchy is a recurring theme within my work. I am interested in the influences (personal morality, political and religion), which enable us to live within society, and also when these forces go wrong, revealing the perverse, primordial character.

Drop the mask of cultivation, and it is not natural sociality that prevails at first, but only the perverse, sadistic, character layer.

Wilhelm Reich - Mass Psychology of Fascism (1934)

In the work, the boundary between the inner and outer body is blurred, as coarse hairs protrude and fluids seep, representing uncontrollable forces permeating the order and sophistication.

The work takes inspiration from Wilhelm Reich, who arranges Sigmund Freud’s model of the unconscious into layers. The surface layer is our civilised persona (super-ego), while the middle layer is the equivalent of the Freudian unconscious and contains our sadistic and sexual urges (id). The inner core is essentially virtuous (ego), however its good intentions can become perverted when passing through the corrupt middle layer.

Spleen (2011 - detail)Felt, metal thread and human hair

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The sculpture’s tactile quality, attract and repulse simultaneously. The pieces blur the distinction between male and female genitalia, by imposing penetrative powers on the feminine shape, and soft characteristics on the masculine form.

In Sigmund Freud’s Oedipus theory, the child develops through several stages: - 1) Oral (close maternal bond through breastfeeding), 2) Anal (excremental function bound to society’s idea of order and disgust), 3) Phallic (fear of castration in the male, or penis-envy in the female) and 4) Latent (amnesia of previous stages, which become repressed and enter the unconscious).

AboveHermaphroditos II

(2012)Ceramics, satin and tin glaze

 Left

Mama II (2009 - detail)

Latex and animal hair

4©Rosina Godwin 2015

A second body of work takes inspiration from the Sigmund Freud’s essay The Uncanny (1919); where ‘das heimliche’ (the canny) implies homely and friendly, while ‘das unheimliche’ (the uncanny) denotes a strange object or experience. The uncanny has a second layer of meaning, when something long forgotten is rediscovered (i.e. the Freudian Oedipal process), the uncanny transports the once familiar into the frightening.

The normally comforting persona of toys is rendered uncanny when knitted into internal organ forms, or feature teeth and hair in unnatural places. The toys represent the darker side of the unconscious mind - which is naive yet unrestrained by the social morality. The uninhibited desires of the toys, have allowed them to interbreed and create bizarre hybrids, while their perverted thoughts reveal themselves as peculiar physical manifestations.

Baby I (2008)Latex, animal hair, modroc and

found objects

info@rosinagodwin.comwww.rosinagodwin.com