Chicory Miles offers two cast-bronze pieces in this show. Her Churning of the Milk hangs from the ceiling. It appears to be a pod-like vessel, though the opening is too high to be in sight. The pod is composed of bulbous organic forms which resemble hanging breasts, as the title would indicate. They are abstracted such that some have a narrower, cucumber shape so that they may be read as vegetable despite the indication of nipples on their tips. The female body is often associated with the organic, and specifically in art history with fruit or flowers. The seed-pod offered here is an interestingly indirect metaphor, suggesting the protective quality of the womb as well as its more usually represented fecundity. Despite the formal resolution of the piece as sculpture its subject being an arrangement of breasts is a somewhat grotesque play on the typical comparisons. Chicory was heavily pregnant during Katrina and felt that her own fertility carried extraordinary responsibility. Although not shown in this exhibition, she made a fascinating film, also called The Churning of the Milk shortly after the storm which displaces the more direct concerns about rebuilding to a metaphorical and poetic commentary on the responsibility of bringing life into the world. In this case then, we may suggest that she is her own subject and that her condition as artist-mother is something she is addressing in relation to a far wider understanding of the role of creativity. Read the rest of this entry »