Keith Roberts is a scientist, writer and curator. In these selected excerpts from his insightful review of the monograph, Keith examines ambiguity and eroticism in my work.
“The work is darkly and genuinely sensational.”
“<The works> are ambiguous <in their sexuality>. Feathers are used by male birds to seduce, and although many works have female attributes, they are <often> far tougher, more androgynous, far more aggressive, far more thrusting, and sometimes definitely far more ‘male’.”
“Works like Cleave and Pelt seem to invoke the mythical vagina dentata, threatening castration, but at the same time seductive and luring. ‘Cleave’ is one of only a handful of words in the English language that have two diametrically opposing meanings, to cling to as one, or to split asunder, as ambiguous and alluring as the works themselves. Love and hate, sex and death – enter triumphant and exit diminished! I used to quite like Koestler’s explanation of creativity (and jokes) as often arising when one matrix of knowledge or expectation is mixed unexpectedly with another, and I find much of that is true in many of <MccGwire's> works.”
“There are two clear kinds of works in the book, that reflect the ambiguity throughout the works. On the one hand are the confined, constrained, corseted constructions, usually constricted within anaerobic cabinets or domes. And on the other are the emetic fluid eruptions, emerging energetically from erotic environmental orifices of various descriptions. The latter works reflect on the open idea of liquid as an erotic or maternal medium — secretion, ejaculation, lactation or amniotic fluid, while the former reflect on more closed ideas of transgressive constraint, repression and captivity.”
