Our remake is from the painting La Soiree by Vittorio Reggianini, 1858 - 1938 and is oil on canvas. The idea of the La Soiree is that it involves women existing on their own without men. From this we will be looking at women existing amongst themselves and outside of expectations of womanhood. As a group we are all connected by a love for feminism. The piece would be made with a Riot Grrrl perspective on it. Although this movement is from the 90’s, there is a resurgence of it coupled with ‘punk feminism’. Within the past, Riot Grrrl has been for the middle class, white woman. Modern day Riot Grrrl and punk feminism has a more intersectional outlook of its feminism, which we are going to include. On the instagram we plan to include pictures and biographies of influential women who inspire us and have been lost and ignored to history, these women are going to mainly comprise of WoC and trans women as these are experiences we cannot speak for as we are white and cis or non binary people. When you walk around the house there will be music playing in each of the rooms to represent the area. We have done a photoshoot of our group in a house setting as a way to promote the collective on our instagram, to show us remaking the painting and also to show women existing by themselves.
We are proposing to make an exhibit that takes you through a whole house and show women existing in the house. The house will have five bedrooms in it, each showing the personality of a different woman (Five as there are five members in the group) and there will be a living room, kitchen and bathroom. Within Riot Grrrl there is a big idea of creating a sense of community, so the communal spaces, living room, kitchen, bathroom we would design together to help build the sense of community. The exhibit itself will be toured to different places in the UK or world. The exhibit could be taken to cities where major feminist movements have happened. We have taken the floor plan of an empty house and made a 3D mockup of how it would look. These rooms will then be able to be drawn digitally by us. In the original piece, there are roses so to follow this through, we are looking into flower languages. In Victorian times this was a common method of communication. Each bedroom will have flowers in it that reflect the personality of the girl. These flowers will go in other areas of the house to reflect other messages too. To help create the idea of a safe space, we are also going to have messages on fridges or pin boards of helplines that can be called. The communal areas will have a playlist playing that everyone has contributed to, to represent all of our music tastes. Each room will then have a separate playlist to reflect the personality of the lady we are creating a personality for. In some of the rooms, we will include books on the topic of intersectionality to help educate people on these matters and allow people from minority groups to speak, without us speaking for them. To help assist with giving the women a narrative, as you go around the house there will be items such as diaries, videos on the tv and audio recordings showing aspects of each of the ladies lives and how they met. This allows people to see how they currently exist but also how they have previously existed. As people enter different rooms, there will be augmented reality versions of our women being in the rooms to show them occupying the space.
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As part of our proposal we wanted to include flower language into our exhibition. In the Victorian era, flowers were primarily used to deliver messages that could not be spoken aloud. In a sort of silent dialogue, flowers could be used to answer “yes” or “no” questions. Also, in the original piece (La Soiree) there are also flowers on the chair so we thought it would be a great idea to bring that into our proposal and our individual rooms to relate it back to the original work. Each one of us have chosen flowers to decorate our rooms with and each flower has a different meaning.
Within Riot Grrrl, there is the idea of creating a safe space for women and being able to discuss topics that could be taboo in the mainstream media. Topics like rape, domestic abuse and sexuality are commonly talking about within the movement. Taking this idea of creating a safe space to be able to discuss stuff, we are adding helplines around the house for women to see and be able to get help and support if needed. These helplines will be integrated into the house setting on things like notes on fridges or pin boards.
As a riot grrrl based collective we thought it would be appropriate to create a playlist for the proposal with only women led bands and singers for the communal areas of the house. The playlist is mostly made up of female punk singers and bands like bikini kill, some which are not well known. We thought about making individual playlists for our rooms too to reflect the women’s personalities. We feel by having a female led playlist in the communal areas will help female bands that are struggling gain a wider audience too. In the peak of the Riot Grrrl movement, in their meetings they would support each others music, so this is a good way to reflect that in our remake.
As a collective, we are all white women, we wanted to have some intersectionality without speaking on other womens behalf. Using books is a good way to be able to do this. Whilst walking around the exhibit, there will be different books added around to allow people to read them as they are there to further educate themselves on intersectionality and even encourage people to carry on ready these books in their own time.
To help aid adding intersectionality to our collective, we created instagram posts to show inspirational women that have been lost to history. We created a Riot Grrrl inspired mixed with victorian edits of the women and researched and wrote short biographies of them. This allowed us to show Women of Colour and Trans Women to a different audience compared to those who may have seen it in the exhibition, allowing further education for people.
After choosing a woman from the painting we created a bedroom space for each woman to have reflecting our own personalities and using themes from the paintings. As we are designing a room each, we wanted to design a character that fits with the room and aesthetic. jkhkjkjhAfter choosing a woman from the painting we created a bedroom space for each woman to have reflecting our own personalities and using themes from the paintings. As we are designing a room each, we wanted to design a character that fits with the room and aesthetic.
As riot grrl promotes a safe space for women, we wanted to take this idea for the photoshoot and apply it to the bathroom. Being inspired from a nightclub setting where in the women’s bathroom you would go to the toilet with your friends, share makeup and advice, we applied this to the photoshoot. We have also shown us all remaking the original piece in outfits we wouldn’t normally feel comfortable wearing out. With some of the other photos, we wanted to show women existing with each other. Riot grrl promotes a safe space for women, we wanted to take this idea for the photoshoot and apply it to the bathroom. Being inspired from a nightclub setting where in the women’s bathroom you would go to the toilet with your friends, share makeup and advice, we applied this to the photoshoot. We have also shown us all remaking the original piece in outfits we wouldn’t normally feel comfortable wearing out. With some of the other photos,
To allow us to have a digital conception of the whole house, we have created a floor plan on Sketch Up from an actual Victorian House based in Clifton. From there a basic room structure has been built up. From there we could have a virtual video of the whole house, showing all of the rooms to people who couldn’t view it. The house we looked at in Clifton was one you could buy for around £180,000, on average it’s around £4,000 to have a house professionally decorated. To furnish each room it would cost about £2,000 per room. Making it £200,000 on the house and decoration alone. All of this could take around five months to fully furnish and decorate it just as we liked. We would also need to consider the trip hazards around the house when people visited it, as there are potential chairs, sofas, items on the floor for example. We could make sure these items aren’t right in the centre of the room so people are less likely to trip over them and have signs for people to look where they are stepping.
With our final room images, each bedroom represents a different woman in the painting, with the living room, bathroom and kitchen showing the communal spaces. Each bedroom shows the women’s different personality and reflects how a modern day woman can be, such as being loud and vibrant, messy or calm.
Within these rooms, if there will be diaries/audio recordings or videos of the women’s lives that people can view or listen to. Not only will this make the exhibit interactive for the audience but, we can show more of a narrative surrounding the women, allowing them to be multifaceted characters instead of one dimensional objects. The narrative could include day to day experiences they’ve had, adventures with friends, good and bad times and romances for example. When walking into the rooms, there will be augmented reality versions of the women in the rooms to show them existing in the rooms. The audience could hold their phone camera up to the rooms and show the women in the rooms, allowing the audience to go further in depth into the women’s lives and how they exist.