One of the leading feminist artists, Mary Kelly came to the fore with mixed-media work that explored women's lives. In Post-Partum Document (1973-9), Kelly focused on the experience of having a baby son. A section of this six-part work is in the Tate Collection. She juxtaposed the signs and traces of physical existence (stains, moulds taken from the body, pieces of blanket) and the symbolic and cerebral (diaries, medical texts, diagrams, sometimes scribbled over by her child). Post Partum Document (1975) skillfully evoked the subtleties of the relationship between Kelly and the infant, fluctuating between intense physical intimacy, and the abstract and intellectual. In a strategic move away from making iconic images of motherhood (such as those painted by Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt), Kelly's piece represented an evolving, and, in some ways, unrepresentable, relationship, refusing the idea that the mother-child bond is simple, instinctive and 'natural'.
Kelly has also focused on female labor in the collaborative installation (with Margaret Harrison and Kay Hunt) Women at Work (1973-5, Tate). Extase (1986; part of a larger series, Interim, of 1984-9) explores the representation of older women, beyond childbearing age. Kelly was artist in residence at the women's college New Hall, Cambridge University, in 1985-6. She helped New Hail to acquire Extase, which led to their formation of a collection of women's art (with work by Mary Fedden, Ghisha Koenig, Tess Jaray, Sylvia Melland, Cornelia Parker, Kate Whiteford and Laetitia Yhap).
But Kelly does not only explore femininity. Her installation Mea Culpa (1999) interrogates our response to reports of political atrocities, and she has also looked specifically at modern masculinity. In Gloria Patri {1992) she represented the chasm between images of maleness in military institutions (authoritarian, fearless and strong), and the experience of soldiers. A series of aluminum shields were over-written with male voices, transcriptions of the fragmented memories and fleeting emotions of daily life. In today's conflicted world Kelly's exposure of the fragile humanity behind the armour is much needed. |
