Caitlin Devoy
“I was excited to be invited in to an all-woman project which reflects our shared concerns and appreciation of each others practices. The chance to meet other women artists experienced in the challenges of sustaining an art practice in a male dominated industry is galvanizing.
There are simultaneous threads when I have ideas for work which always seem to include humour as a critical tactic, a kinesthetic or embodied feeling about making an object (almost thinking of it like a body about to dance more than purely a visually intriguing object), and a similar feeling towards a material.
I chose to include two of my cast silicone recorder works, wall hung (pink) and wall hung (black) because they’re weirdly sexy objects, which tempt the viewer to touch them in spite of the fact that that is usually against the rules in a gallery space.
The familiarity of everyday objects, things we understand as having a particular function, enables a playful subversion of the audience’s expectations about what these objects might do or be for. I agree with Jennifer Higgie when she argues that humour is not necessarily frivolous but rather employed to “activate repressed impulses, embody alienation or displacement, disrupt convention, and to explore power relations in terms of gender, sexuality, class, taste, or racial and cultural identities.”
Caitlin Devoy x mothermother 2020
1 Jennifer Higgie, the artist’s joke, (london: whitechapel gallery and the MIT press, 2007) p.12.
Wall Hung (Pink), detail. 2010, silicon. image courtesy of Nat Tozer
Installation view with Jessica Douglas. image courtesy of Nat Tozer
Wall Hung (Black) and Wall Hung (Pink). Image courtesy of Gareth Moon
Installation view, left to right Jessica Douglas, Caitlin Devoy and et al. Image courtesy of Gareth Moon
Installation view, left to right Caitlin Devoy, et al. and Hye Rim Lee. Image courtesy of Nat Tozer
Caitlin holds an MFA from Massey University, a Postgraduate Diploma of Fine Art from Massey University, a Postgraduate Diploma of Design from Whanganui School of Design and a BA from Victoria University of Wellington. Recent exhibitions include: ONE, Jhana Millers 2019, Imminent Domain at Playstation Gallery 2019, and Latent Image at Enjoy Public Art Gallery 2016. Caitlin lives and works in Wellington, New Zealand.
Caitlin’s sculpture-based practice deploys the seductive potential of materiality to engage with questions around sexuality, objectification and power. Everyday objects — sauce bottles, cream canisters, recorders — stand in for body-parts, humorously subverting the tradition of the male nude. Caitlin’s work plays with the gallery/museum display case, which typically aims to create a hermetically sealed space, protected from the viewers touch. Objects literally penetrate display cases, poking fun at partitioning the intellectual and the bodily, tempting the viewer.
Caitlin Devoy is represented by Jhana Millers Gallery.