Can Deborah Kelly’s Empress Save Cementa’s Pozible Campaign?

 By Ruth Skilbeck

WANTED! Art  Empress Seeking Empire Builder of Distinction.

IN the reflexive Empire of Signs that is produced in the intersection of contemporary art, media and commerce, anyone can build their own empire by purchasing a piece of art that is symbolically reflexive of the values of the commoditized art world .

That is the subliminal symbolic equation of symbolic value that has seen the value of contemporary art translating into astronomical prices with new generations of global art collectors, keen to display that their taste matches the numbers in their hedge funds, or “just for the love of it”, have bought art that reflects the media values of the times.

 By symbolically reflecting these values, contemporary art literally becomes what it represents which is a sign, of the symbolic value, bestowed upon art by collective cultural agreements of the art world. (Whereas not everyone by all means may agree, some do, enough to purchase the works for the prices asked).

 Now anyone interested in empire building, knows that they also need to show off their taste and culture, the attributes that Bourdieu referred to as “distinction”; money alone does not an emperor make in the empire of signs that is the contemporary post modern mediated cultural realm.

All of these meanings are effectively, to this critic, displayed and played with ironically in the work by Deborah Kelly appositely titled Empress. The work upturns the patriarchal order by depicting King Kong’s former female victim as dominant Empress. Of course this also raises the question of women artists’ erotic female representation that has exercised feminist debate since the 70s, is it empowering or does it play into male fantasies? We’ll leave that one open, for now.

Right now, it’s the context of this work as the latest donation to the Cementa Pozible campaign that’s of most interest.

It may seem particularly appropriate that it is this work that has emerged as the potential savior of the Cementa Contemporary Art Festival Pozible Campaign, and at the very last minute.  As more than  one art commentator and critic has been heard to whisper of their shift into online virtual arts websites as a move to building their “online media empires”...

And now the Empress appears! Replete in symbolic splendor, sexy, semi naked, surrounded by sky scraping Empire of erotic Signs: hallucinatory phallic symbols vibrating in the epicenter of western capital values, where she upturns the legend of King Kong, and in the guise of his former female victim, grasps the monster in her hand and renders her foe helpless!

As if in fulfillment of collective dreams for a powerful female savior, the Empress has appeared with only hours to go before the close of the campaign.  Several thousand dollars more are needed to reach the target of the Cementa Contemporary Arts festival, to provide the means to “buy an artist a bed” for the nights of the festival in the rural post cement works town in rural New South Wales. 

One of a new generation of Australia’s prominent contemporary women artists, Deborah Kelly has at the last minute donated her striking work, to the Pozible campaign.

Will the Empress save the day? As we go to post, there are less than 15 hours to go. We await the outcome of this latest intervention with interest and shall keep readers posted.

Deborah Kelly "Empress" (2005-08) 5 ed. of 5
signed pigment print on Hahnemvelle cotton archival paper