Punch and Judy

here is my mister punch!

Angela Carter and Dolls

The magical realist, Angela Carter creates a creepy doll maker in the Magic Toyshop who welds control over all the family and the liberated puppet Lady Purple escapes the power of her puppeteer.

Lindsay Seers and ventriloquism

In the relationship between the doll maker and the doll, the doll displays a part of the doll maker’s personality. Likewise with Ventriloquism, one is speaking for another, the Vent for the Dummy. Lindsay Seers states in Jennifer Poole’s article, that ‘the vampire, the ventriloquist, the possessed, all refer in some sense to the problematic relationship between subject and object, the fusion and confusion of them.’ Furthermore, Steven Connor from his book, Dumbstruck suggests that ‘the ventriloquist’s voice is like the neurotic symptom, it is both wound and sore, enigma and explication, trauma and therapy.’ He continues ‘for the voice is the mark both of the self’s presence to and its estrangement from itself; the ventriloquial voice enacts the strangeness of the self’s self presence.

Double Dolly

Family?

Are they tearing each other apart?

Death Dolly

The white death dolly is a dolly to be comforted rather than comforting the owner. The ‘death’ side of the death dollies are represented by crossed arms. This is an idea taken from Egyptian mummies where the crossed arms represent death to resemble the God Orisis whose arms were crossed as he was holding a staff. As a simplified ‘hieroglyphic’ form, the unclothed death dollies explore the bond between life and death.

Double Dollies

The doll is made in the image of the doll maker in that it would normally resemble a human.The purpose of a doll may be to comfort but also entertain.

I possess a double dolly that represents red riding hood and the grandmother/wolf. This doll can represent danger and innocence in one and in itself a narrative or moral can be held. The doll is a double with two separate identities in one. With this doll the dress acts not only as a cover but also as a disguise.

I wanted to make dolls that had this double aspect; initially the double dollies were conceived to reveal a hidden ‘other’ under the skirt. The doubling idea transformed itself into one of very separate dualities the dollies are both a good and a bad twin. They are the quick and the dead, revealed and hidden and straight armed and crossed armed.