Pictures on Pink Paper
'... Change things –
and they have to change
she laughed – with the best will in the world
they can't do it
and they don't have the best will in the world…'
In Lis Rhodes' closely-textured work, pictures and meanings are experimented with, brought richly together or pared down to abstraction in order to challenge and re-create. She shows us how the apparent inevitability of “the natural” and immutability of “the normal” are held neatly in place by those to whom such an order is of advantage. ‘Pictures on Pink Paper’ is – women talking, thinking aloud and questioning this order; a critique of past experiences and ways of thinking, interwoven with the images and sounds from places remembered. There are numerous threads and layers of possibilities and contradictions, as the film moves between what is heard and what might be spoken; was known and is now seen.
... fantasy and experience rush together – contained between the hedges of... history? gates... gates of domesticity and sexual control? contained by common sense – policed by the fingers of violence – wrapped in newspaper and put, privately, into the dustbin – 'unconsciously' – thus fantasy is placed... unknowable because it is unheard...
– Lis Rhodes
Description source: Circles catalogue (1987). Edited by Jenny Holland and Jane Harris.
