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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Joseph Noonan-Ganley
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Femme Fabrications is an installation made from research on Jean Wilkinson’s 1977 book Flower Fabrications alongside research into the American artist Joseph Cornell’s source materials held in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s archives. A series of textile works encased in silk lined boxes trace Noonan-Ganley’s step-by-step construction of a rose from organdie. The floral emblem of the white rose (dried), death is preferable to a loss of innocence, becomes a filter, which Noonan-Ganley uses to denominate and consider a number of possible recipients for the rose. Joseph Cornell himself, Joyce Hunter - a Manhattan waitress who courted Cornell, Fanny Cerrito - a Romantic ballerina from the 19th century, Marilyn Monroe and an anonymous acrobat all take their turn as possible recipients. In the case of Cornell, audio recordings, which ruminate on how his sexuality pertain to the criteria of the rose are edited together with home-camcorder video footage of the house that Cornell lived in for most of his life - the house he made the entirety of his artworks within. Each of the components of the work contain a disappearance of one kind or another: the whole textile flower slips away from completion as it's only ever glimpsed through fragments and partial combinations; Cornell’s impotence and how it kept him from consummating a relationship is detailed in his lovers comments; accounts of Fanny Cerrito physically becoming lighter than air are recalled; Cornell’s stack of newspaper clippings that chronicle the days surrounding Marilyn Monroe’s death are remarked upon; photos of an anonymous acrobat frozen in the air as she performs a somersault off a tight-rope suspend her inevitable return to ground. Scenographic recordings of Noonan-Ganley speaking to microphone hosts many of these inter-textual engagements across speakers and videos.
Artist(s): Noonan-Ganley J
Publication type: Exhibition
Publication status: Published
Year: 2016
Venue: Quick Millions Gallery
Location: London
URL: https://www.quickmillions.net/joseph-noonan-ganley-femme-fabricat
