Raggett EMA442 Upload 1

EMA442 Sharyn Raggett Project Upload 1

What is my object?

My object for the project is called a Swift Whip, and it’s a stainless steel hand-cranked beater with bakelite handles. It’s a kitchen utensil that can be used for beating eggs, or cake batter or whipping cream. I did a bit of background research, and it’s an Australian invention, patented in 1932 by a company called Propert, and they’re still in production today, although these days they’re mostly made of plastic.

Why have I chosen it?

I’ve chosen it mainly for it’s personal and cultural significance to me. This particular one belonged to my grandmother, who was a great home cook and baker. She died 5 years ago now at the age of 91, but she taught me how to cook when I was a kid, and I definitely inherited her love of making things, whether that’s art or food. I’m attracted to it as well because I think it’s an ingenious invention that still works, and probably rivals the expensive electric beaters that we use today. I love that kitchen utensils, like most things back then, were made to last.

Where is it from?

This beater has been in my family for about 75 years. It belonged to my late grandmother, Mary McKinnon, who was born in 1921 in Molong, which is about an hour out of Bathurst. To give it some context, when Ben Chifley became Prime Minister in 1945, Mary would have been 24 years old, and my own mum would have been about 2 years old, so I know this beater was in use during the late 1940’s, and possibly in fairly close proximity to the one Elizabeth Chifley might have been using.

What do I know about it?

Mary was probably given this beater by her own mother when she got married in the early 1940’s. This one is well used and well loved. It’s a bit rusty, but it has huge sentimental appeal for me. I know it’s been used to make hundreds of cakes, biscuits and custards over the years. My grandmother’s family came to Australia from the Isle of Skye in Scotland, and Scottish shortbread biscuits have developed a kind of legendary status in our family and among the friends and family that receive them from us at Christmas time. My mum, my sister and I have a cottage industry every December where we make literally hundreds of them!

How does it connect to the Chifley home and education centre?

I know that Elizabeth Chifley owned one too (there is one in photographs of the Chifley home kitchen). I think that for women of Elizabeth’s and my grandmother’s generations, cooking was as much a necessity as it was a form of creative expression. I think that being a good cook was also seen as a great accomplishment.

I know that my own grandmother was really proud of the status she had within her family as a good cook. I can see parallels in the lives of both women in that they were both very frugal, they

made do with what they had, and their home was very much their world. On the Chifley website there is a great section of Elizabeth’s recipes, and most are familiar to me as the sorts of things my grandmother used to make. I also found out that the Propert factory where this beater was made, was one of the first factories to reopen and continue production after the end of WWII, so there’s a further connection to post-war Australia and Ben Chifley.

How can I take this object and recontextualise it, extend it, or use it in something that will sustain me over the coming weeks?

How can I give it a new life, or a new spin?

There are so many directions I could take this beater!

From a technical point of view, I could: • photograph it • animate it • pull it apart and make a new sculptural form from it • make like Jackson Pollock and use it to splatter paint on a canvas • attach pencils to it and make a drawing machine of sorts I guess these are the sorts of issues I will be looking to resolve in time for the next upload, so you might see evidence of these experiments as I try to exhaust the possibilities of this beater in the coming weeks.

Thematically I can see how I might use it to convey a point of view about:

• art and memory • biography (how do we tell the story of a life?)

• technology and obsolescence • the role of women in 1940’s Australia Either way, I’m most interested in approaching this project through the postmodern frame. My background is in photography, installation and illustration. As a photomedia artist I was always most interested in the alchemical aspects of photography, and have always been fascinated with chemical processes and darkroom experimentation. I’m really interested in cross-curriculum connections as well, and am really keen to learn as much as I can about STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics). It might not be a new concept to experienced teachers, but it’s new to me, and it’s certinly an area where I see myself in time as a visual arts teacher.

In my day job, I’m a graphic designer, and I design materials and resources for the teaching of primary school science. So the intersection of art and science is something that really fascinates me, and is probably my most logical starting point.