Reimaging Social Fabric to bring out its “live, laugh, love”.
It is on show at Mask – the art of concealing and revealing at Artemisia Gallery and Event Space.
The old story is the same story, but it is archived and replaced with a fresher sister. We are wired to fill in the gaps and cover over what we don’t like or understand. We use mythologies and masks on ourselves and we place them on others. A young woman was murdered, and for the last eighty years, she has been labelled by what she was wearing: chinese yellow silk pyjamas. Social fabric.
A digital print starts with the police reconstruction of her face, beautified by the BodyTune app and framed in white.
And she was on my mind before; Social Fabric was first seen in 2020.
Pic: Wundergym
The Pyjama Girl case starts outside of Albury in 1934 where a young woman is bashed, shot, dumped with a bag on her head and then set on fire. She remained unidentified. She was stored in a bath. Her already damaged face was distorted again with artist impressions and published including in the new technology: the colour magazine. The Pyjama Girl became Linda Agostini and her husband was tried and later deported. There is uncertainty about the identification and conviction.
The tendrils of this case weaved itself into the community moving out across the country using the veins of the Press and over time our need to fit this into our values made her as big as Phar Lap and Ned Kelly. Social fabric.
Respect to Linda Agostini, Anna Philomena Morgan and the Pyjama Girl.