Contemporary Australia: Women

78 deposition 2011–12 Acrylic and oil on canvas Triptych: 200 x 180cm; 230 x 80cm; 200 x 180cm; 230 x 440cm (overall) Opposite coupling 2011 Acrylic and oil paint on canvas 200 x 180cm are sitting in the hammock; whereas, in Hagerty’s the surface area of the hammock is reduced to thin lines. It is unclear whether the forms in Hagerty’s work are balancing on a rope — or perhaps they are bound up by the rope. This sense of BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism) is heightened by the gimp and/or grim reaper masks found in deposition : Hagerty points out that these could be seen to be any hooded garb from a burqa to a mantilla. 6 This fickle line that runs between pleasure and pain is a theme that also occurs throughout Bacon’s oeuvre. Like Bacon, Hagerty is interested in double images, and the way that one form can dissolve into or suggest another. 7 The flashes of red in the right-hand panel of deposition add to the violence of the image. This works in contrast to the fleshy pinks found in coupling 2011 and coupling II 2012, which were inspired by the soft palette used in illustrations of the Kama Sutra. In many of Marie Hagery’s works there is often just an ear or a knee among her abstract forms — as they are the only visible glimpses of flesh, they turn into fetishised entities. Beyond the fetish object they can be read as a growth, perhaps an abstract form becoming figurative. In a Christian context this evokes the biblical passage, ‘And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us’ (John 1:14) 8 , which describes the incarnation of Jesus who is simultaneously man and God. Following on from this, coupling can be read as a fleshy abstraction taking form and coupling II as that form becoming figurative. In this sense, coupling and coupling II present the viewer with the birth of Jesus, and deposition as both Jesus’ descent from the cross and his resurrection. This life cycle suggests the possibility of abstraction becoming figuration, and then also falling back into abstraction. Like Jesus, who is both man and God, Marie Hagerty’s works are at once entirely abstract and — fleetingly and potentially — figurative. Ellie Buttrose