pink; every girl loves pink

artknowledgenews.com

Last night I had dinner with a good friend of mine and Kate Gilmore's name came up in conversation. I mentioned I will write about her today and have found myself sitting on this post, procrastinating for about five hours. You see, Kate Gilmore is one of those artists I have been avoiding writing about here on eatpinklove since I began this blog in November last year. Why, you ask? Well, she is an obvious contemporary artist for me to write about as the reasons why and the contexts within which she uses the colour pink is exactly the way in which we would expect artists (especially female) to use the colour in their works.

Go to her website and you are confronted with an image of six women, all different shapes and sizes, facing the same way and confined by the colour pink. It really sets the tone for what Gilmore explores in her work and what you are about to enter into by clicking on her projects page. Traces of hard core seventies feminist artworks are very aparent once you click onto her list of videos. 

I think the reason why I am not into artists who work in a similar vain as Gilmore is because I'm not for violence of any sort preferring the 'kill them with kindness' approach rather than the anger fueled, forcefulness and bashing approach of this style of work (have I been living in California for way too long or what??!).

Every Girl Loves Pink is no exception to the violence within Gilmore's practice. She constructs to deconstruct; a vicious cycle that is seen as the struggle of women over the history of women-kind throughout the decades, centuries and millenniums.  But it could also be seen as the struggle of all of humanity, regardless of gender identity.

I can appreciate artists such as Gilmore producing works like this as the struggle she is focusing on in her work is very real for a lot of women  in today's society. I just don't feel it is relevant in the way I choose to live my life as a woman in the culture I was born into.