Annette Messager

Fine Art - Transform

A french painter, sculptor and photographer, Annette Messager's work drew up on everyday life,  "taking such subjects as toys and needlework. She usually used a range of closely related found-objects,  as well as creating performance pieces. In her work she questioned accepted perceptions of women." - www.tate.org.uk

The Pikes 1992‑3

 Half of an installation first shown at the Musée Nationale d'Art Moderne, Paris, now in Tate Modern. It consists of more than one hundred poles or spikes, 'pikes', each of which impales or supports an object or image.

"Little bodies made out of a combination of doll parts, stuffed limbs, headless torsos and internal organs are enclosed in sections of stocking, or pierced by many coloured pencils and hung with drawings of torture instruments and victims. Other pikes bear pastel drawings of limbs, corpses and figures of despair as well as fragments of maps showing various contemporary political entities in Africa, Europe and the Middle East." - www.tate.org.uk

The 'pike' has a paricular link to the political turbulence in France, and gives a sinister feel when you know the story behind it, as they were used to bear the guillotined heads of the aristocracy during the popular uprising, known as the Reign of Terror, during the French Revolution. I like how a lot of her works are suspended. It gives the impression that she feels she is allowed to express herself and her thoughts freely.

Much of her work is a little more light- hearted...

'I like to tell stories… children’s stories are monstrous' - Anette Messager

This explains why much of her work is based on childrens' toys and childhood over the past four decades.