Inspired by the sculptured shoes of local artist Jan Hynes in her 2002 exhibition Hynesight, Perc Tucker Regional Gallery recently hosted the exhibition Walk this Way. Featuring for the most part shoes, the designs of thirty-six local artists were interspersed with several pivotal works recognised nationally.
Superficially, the rationale of this exhibition is a lighthearted view of shoe and foot fetishes; however flowing through the works is an undercurrent much explored in feminist theory through the examination of literature and fairytales as well as through ideological constructs evident in artefacts.
The sexual connotations associated with the shoe fetish may have originated with the Queen of Sheba, a rich and knowledgeable pagan queen who bared her legs to cross a mirrored lake which had been disguised by her host, King Solomon, as a pool of water.' Because he gave her all she desired, the Queen's submission to the will and conversion to the faith of Solomon appears in 'The Book of Kings'. Shame or other dubious motivations for her compliance prevail in various ambiguous versions of the tale which describe the discovery of the Queen having a deformity beneath her dress: the hooves of an ass or perhaps that she was splay-footed or bird-footed, or even had mermaid or reptilian extremities. Perhaps she was simply hairy legged. Whatever the case, she was cured by the magic water of Solomon. Blurring of literal and metaphorical translations over time prevent the drawing of any real conclusions.
Nevertheless, deformity and transformation is a common theme in women's stories. Extant in often-cautionary seventeenth century fairytales 'the woman as heroine' had to change her way of life to secure the prince and his castle