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The Ironing Maidens: Melania Jack & Patty Preece

Pressing Topics

12 December — 14 January 2023

NorthSite at Bulmba-ja, 96 Abbott Street, Cairns City 4870
Image coustesy of the artist

The conceptual framework of the visual elements of this project employs a glitch feminism lens to explore themes of gender socialisation, equality and labour.”
Melania Jack

Using the iron, as the iconic symbol of domestic labour, Pressing Topics addresses issues related to the gendered and racialized oppression of our world’s domestic work force, the women.

This multi-media installation of projection, sculpture, digital collage, video and sound is a low fi wonderland that smashes pink, Pop and the industrial into a new and playful aesthetic. This work attempts to disrupt the ideal proposition of the perfect house wife or the perfect domestic worker and aims to elevate and confront historical and ongoing contemporary issues of discrimination in the domestic labour force.

This work operates through a glitch feminist lens. This natural progression from Cyberfemisim, Glitch feminism, uses the notion of the digital error to interrupt existing social structures including the patriarchy and capitalism to imagine new worlds.

Pressing Topics addresses contemporary issues of gender socialisation and equity within the trans global workforce. The Ironing Maidens reorder the hierarchy associated with familiar domestic objects like iron boards, washing machines and ovens into a powerful instrument of criticality. This installation of absurd digital montages, audio hacks, multiples and repetition makes the familiar strange as an offering to reassess and emphasise the unseen labour of women.



The Regional Arts Development Fund is a partnership between the Queensland Government and Cairns Regional Council to support local arts and culture in regional Queensland.

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