Courtesy: the artists and NorthSite Contemporary Arts, QLD.

Using the iron, as the iconic symbol of domestic labour, Pressing Topics addresses issues related to the gendered and racialized oppression of our world’s domestic work force, the women.

The Ironing Maidens, Melania Jack and Patty Preece, have created a multi-media installation of projection, sculpture, digital collage, video and sound is a low fi wonderland that smashes pink, Pop and the industrial into a new and playful aesthetic. The work attempts to disrupt the ideal proposition of the perfect house wife or the perfect domestic worker and aims to elevate and confront historical and ongoing contemporary issues of discrimination in the domestic labour force.

Operating through a glitch feminist lens, the work explores the natural progression from Cyberfemisim and Glitch feminism, and uses the notion of the digital error to interrupt existing social structures including the patriarchy and capitalism to imagine new worlds.

Pressing Topics addresses contemporary issues of gender socialisation and equity within the trans global workforce. The Ironing Maidens reorder the hierarchy associated with familiar domestic objects like iron boards, washing machines and ovens into a powerful instrument of criticality. This installation of absurd digital montages, audio hacks, multiples and repetition makes the familiar strange as an offering to reassess and emphasise the unseen labour of women.

Opening Event: Friday 16 December 2022, 6pm.