BODY ART
AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM, SYDNEY
Text: Craig Deuce
Photos: Craig Deuce /copyright Australian Museum

Body Art was opened to the public at the Australian Museum in Sydney on February 12th. 2000. It did so amidst great controversy, particularly amongst church groups who tried to have it banned before it even opened. Despite this the exhibition still went ahead albeit with the warning that it was rated ìmî and recommended for mature audiences 15 years and over. The exhibition was the culmination of extensive and exhaustive research, with input from various groups and individuals. Body Art was "Planed to appeal to adults rather than our usual family audience. Focus group research indicated that this group expected the extreme, outrageous confronting and contemporary, but they also wanted an historical perspective to place contemporary forms of bodyart in context... The focus was to be on the individual and to provide to the public some understanding as to why individuals had chosen to express themselves in the way they did."

In addition to using it's own collection of objects, the organisers also appealed for and sourced out numerous items both nationally and internationally, many of which were graciously provided on loan from other public as well as private collections. The exhibition focused on five specific areas which included Body Painting, Tattooing, Scarring, Piercing and Shaping. Starting with the body painting section, this covered a number of examples which included the traditional body painting of Papua New Guinea and the indigenous Aborigines of Australia, the Sydney gay and lesbian Mardi Gras and the traditionally eastern application of Mehendi or Henna as it is also known. Each of these examples included written information pertaining to their cultural context, the meaning and reason for their respective practises, as well as personal accounts. Whereas traditional body painting by the Papua New Guineans denotes identity, for the Australian Aborigines it not only acts as a means of communication in their dance, but also adheres to their conventions, law and religion. The more contemporary example of the Mardi Gras began in Sydney to commemorate the 10th. anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York, where people protested the discrimination towards gays and lesbians. Mehendi has been practised for over 5000 years and is commonly applied to the hands and feet in an array of intricate and delicate designs using a paste consisting of the crushed leaves of the Henna plant. For the Moroccans it protects the wearer from evil, for the Sudanese it expresses a wife's love for her husband, as well as being used to colour the hair and for it's medicinal properties. Indians use Mehendi in their wedding ceremonies, the darker the henna indicating the longer lasting love between a couple.

The Body Painting section provided a general overview of some of it's practices many focusing on it's traditional and historic use. Nowadays body painting has become an art in it's own right, complete with at least one magazine devoted solely to the subject, which not only advertises the many products in the market designed specifically for body painting, but also how-to tips, details on body painting conventions as well as examples by various practitioners. From an art history point of view perhaps it would have been interesting to have incorporated examples of "action"painter Yves Klein. No he isn't the cosmetic underwear maker, I'm referring to the early 60's when Yves used nude women models as 'paint brushes', covering them with paint and pressing their painted bodies against canvas, creating his 'Shroud Anthropometry' series.

The tattooing section was divided into two sections: the historical content of tattooing including it's 'tribal' origins to the contemporary. The traditional section began with a quote from the famous naturalist Charles Darwin who wrote Not one great country can be named from the polar regions in the North to New Zealand in the South, in which the aborigines do not tattoo themselves.On display were various tribal tattooing artifact, which included tattooing tools from the Soloman islands and the Philippines, wooden stencil blocks from Kalimantan as well as written facts about the earliest known examples of tattoo, These ranged from 'Otgi The Iceman,' who was found recently in the Austrian Alps and dates back to 3,300 BC, to the Egyptian 'Mummy of Amunet' from the eleventh Dynasty 2040 to 1994 BC, a priestess of the Hathor, goddess of love whose abdominal tattoos are believed to be for fertility. The 'Tattoo shop' is decked out with wood paneling and a dentists chair with the workbench set in one corner. In the background you can hear the 'soundtrack' of a tattoo shop, complete with the buzzing of the machines, the shaking of ink bottles and the typical dialogue between the tattooist and the customer. In addition to the girlie posters on the wall, there is also a range of old and older school flash, business cards, signs such as 'Prices subject to change according to customer's attitude and certificates from various shows as well as an assortments of photographs . The work bench was complete with tattoo magazines (Tattoos Down Under of course), neatly arranged ink bottles, spray bottle, ash tray, trophies, gloves etc.

Perhaps the only limitation to the tattooing display was that there was no actual footage or evidence of the tattooing process. Apparently one of the limitations of the exhibition was that there could be no evidence of blood, which is naturally inherent throughout the fields of tattooing, scarring and piercing. Whilst it would have been hard to 'disguise' any blood letting whilst videotaping the tattooing process it could have been edited out as in the body piercing footage.

After tattooing came the section on scarification which once again ranged from tribal traditional to the contemporary. As you walked down the corridor there were a number of plaster casts which showed examples of scarification as done in Papua New Guinea. In the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea scarification was used as a rite of passage, part of an initiation ceremony whereby the resulting scars represented the teeth marks of a crocodile around which they had based their tribal mythology. The scars indicated the metaphysical process of the crocodile swallowing the initiates who are then reborn as 'Crocodile Men'.

Traditionally in the past if an Australian Aborigine was a 'cleanskin', ie. without scarring or branding, he or she was unable to trade, get married or take part in the corroborrees or burial ceremonies. Their form of scarification involved the use of stone knives which were so sharp that the recipient is said not to have felt the cuts as they were being performed, (Sure, Ed). Burnt wood, usually that of the conker berry was then placed upon the wound as a traditional means to cauterise it. There were some examples of more contemporary forms of scarification and branding, one in particular where a tattoo had been completed over the top of a branding. There were also a number of tools in a display case that had been used for these examples.

The contemporary examples of scarification and branding in Body Art pale to insignificance when compared to some of the images that can be seen in a number of American tattoo oriented magazines, as well as the examples by various performance artists such a 'Franko B' of the U.K. Although I understand that a lecture was presented by Ron Athey, a Los Angeles performance artist, it would have been interesting to have had video taped footage of performances by artists and groups which incorporate, amongst other things, more extreme acts of self mutilation, various examples of needle and piercing play, bodily suspension and so forth. Nonetheless the scarification and branding in Body Art provided a good introduction to the body piercing section, which like the tattooing sections, seemed to create a great amount of interest.

This interest was due no doubt to the video footage where the public could see a number of piercings being performed and once again not a single drop of blood to offend anyone to be seen. The piercings included an eyebrow, the bridge of the nose, a tongue and a nipple. The piercing of the tongue caused the greatest audience reaction as did the nipple piercing. In addition to the video as in the tattoo section there were photographs of individual's piercings which were accompanied by written text pertaining to the reasons behind them and so on. There was 'Piercer Paul' with his one hundred genital piercings, numerous shots of piercings including various facial and genital piercings in males and females as well as a photograph of a female genital piercing being done, temporary piercings being done with play needles as well as display cabinets filled with all sorts of jewellery. The rather candid photographs of the genital piercings seemed to cause the greatest stir and I observed many a person looking away and wincing.

The jewellery on display ranged from the primitive, such as glass earplugs from Burma, wooden earplugs and aluminium ear weights called Bla' Hong u'co from Kalimantan, as well as other artifact from Papua New Guinea, the Soloman Islands, Borneo and East Africa to the modern use of acrylic, perspex, surgical stainless steel and titanium jewellery. One cabinet held the entire collection of jewellery used by an individual to stretch his numerous piercings. It included captive bead rings, circular barbells, claws, spikes, dilator rings for the prince albert piercing as well as various plugs, retainers and septum spikes; an extravagant if not expensive collection.

Body shaping was the next section and slightly more subdued than that of the piercing . It focused on body shaping in all of it's different forms ranging from corsetry to body building, head and foot binding to cosmetic surgery. Chinese foot binding is now considered to be a barbaric practise, although it was only formally prohibited in 1911. The normal practise was for the foot to be broken then subsequently bound, the big toe left in place whilst the other four toes were folded down under the soul of the foot. This practise originates in Chinese folklore during the Song Dynasty in the tenth century AD, and was seen as a symbol of great beauty amongst women, whilst some male actors and prostitutes also bound their feet.

In modern society cosmetic surgery has now grown to not only encompass breast augmentation, but also includes implants in the cheeks, chin, pectorals, buttocks, testicles and calves, all of which were on display. Also on hand were displays of liposuction and collagen practises. As evidenced in the display it's interesting to note that cosmetic surgery can be seen to date back to 600BC when an Indian surgeon rebuilt the noses of criminals who had them amputated as punishment for their crimes. Once again there were numerous photographs and explanations of individual's practises and it was somewhat disturbing to read of one Chinese lady's story of binding her own feet.

Finally there was an interactive section where you could punch up on an interactive touch screen (luxuriously mounted on an armchair) to learn about corsetry, whether it be an individual's own account of 'waist training' to tips on how to successfully reduce the size of ones waist (an ad for gutbusters? Ed). Also on access was piercing with footage of a frennum and ear cartilage piercing and finally to Mehendi, which accompanied by tinny Indian music, you could learn how to make henna paste as well as tips on aftercare.

As The Sydney Museum states, the exhibition was not only groundbreaking but risky and the team behind Body Art should be applauded for achieving what they have. Perhaps Body Art, hopefully with greater public acceptance, can pave the way toward some more detailed exhibitions and perhaps greater international involvement. Unfortunately the Body Art exhibition was not designed to be photographed. A lot of the glass displays and of course video screens are not forthcoming for the camera so we did the best we could and have greatly detailed the commentary. I would greatly encourage everyone to experience it for themselves rather than just read about it. It would be particularly informative to those who have little or no knowledge of the wonderful world of 'Body Art'. Also it should dispel some myths and fears, created by misinformed and negative media coverage, that some people hold toward these timeless crafts. Body Art will be exhibited at the Australian Museum in Sydney until June 18th. 2000 and will then be traveling, I believe, in the Melbourne direction but at the time of this printing we have no concrete details.