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Marilyn Baldey was a court portrait artist for the Fitzgerald Inquiry. She thus held the peculiar position of an institutional artist-an artist without a personal voice, a 'recorder of the facts'. Plenty, Marilyn Baldey's exhibition at the Spring Hill Baths, was created from a deep need to show positive images of people, especially women. Her exhibition may be defined in opposition to the court room-intimate, dignifying, releasing versus anonymous, labelling, pigeon-holeing.
The exhibition, as a cathartic journey, began in the club room of the Baths with colour photographs of personal friends, most of whom were connected with the inquiry (mainly through the media). They are intimate, candid shots-ironically factual in their photographic reality yet far from the impersonal 'record' of the court portraits. Of these same people, Baldey produced large oil portraits with expressionist colouration and brushwork, emphasising an inner life. Because she produced these images in response to the court portraits and hung them in a non-institutional space, the genre of portraiture was given new vitality. Rather than empowering individualism, Baldey's expressionist portraiture testifies to a cosmic spirit (supported by her quotation from Zen in her statement accompanying the show). This cosmic spirit is personified in Hybiscus- a water creature featured in a series of ink, pastel and acrylic drawings and in a published book entitled Undulations, which were also displayed in the club room of the Baths.
The main feature of the exhibition, however, and the climax of its catharsis, are the figure sculptures which were situated in and around the pool. Somewhat smaller than life size and all but one of them female, the sculptures are made from cellulose-coated fibre-glass resin-a dark amorphous material. Glazed clay