Jay Younger interviewed by Graham Coulter-Smith
Jay Younger's recent exhibition The Sweet Core of Disobedience has sent a few shock waves through the Australian art community, and has changed the artist's view of her position in the art world quite dramatically. The crux of the contention around her exhibition concerns her request for samples of semen from members of the art world. Almost two hundred men were asked, sixty-nine accepted. Jay sent test tubes, with a food preservative included, plus a comprehensive explanation of her reasons for asking for this contribution to her show. In the actual exhibition, which was primarily concerned with representing notions of sensuality and sexual liberation, the test tubes were arranged in a flat spiral on one of the end walls of a room at the Michael Milburn Gallery in Brisbane. On top of the tubes of semen was projected a film of a blindfolded man blowing smoke rings, and in front of this spiral, suspended from the ceiling on a steel platter, there was a wolf's head carved out of ice, which melted throughout the evening of the opening. Down either side of the gallery were sugar-coated ladders and bird cages. On the side walls above the ladders were projected images of three sets of identical female twins from the art world. They had eyes painted on their closed eye lids and a jewel swinging in front of them, as if they were being mesmerised. On the wall opposite the sperm-spiral there was a target painted in glitter coated black on the white wall. The white rings were painted with honey which dripped down the gallery wall onto the floor. Onto the centre of this target a film was projected of... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline