Beata Batorowicz
Shaun Weston
Lisa Reihana & Beata Batorowicz,
Feathers Calling Foxy on the Fone (detail), 2003
The art practice of Polish-born Beata Batorowicz, a self-titled foxy artist, is refreshingly innovative and a source of much amusement. Through fetish bestial garments and objects, large-scale soft sculptures and photographic tableaux she acts out the position of a discontented daughter. Aptly describing this as anti-big Daddy art she expresses an imagined father/daughter relationship, specifically with the late German art hero Joseph Beuys. Both homage and mockery, Batorowicz uses the grossly fabricated story surrounding Beuys for much of her output to which she adds references to the patriarchs of Western art/philosophy: a knight from Duchamp’s chess set and Clement Greenberg’s book The Avant-Garde of Kitsch (1939) for example. The materials and processes used to create (or re-create) these works are loaded with their own histories. In a satirical take on the specifically Polish/German notion of ‘fatherland’ Batorowicz uses traditionally feminine crafts to critique male dominance in the arts. Seemingly disappointed with ‘traditional’ art mediums she introduces knitting, patchwork and sewing to the realm of high art.
Showing great artistic promise Beata Batorowicz has exhibited in several group shows including Hatched (2000) at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Primavera (2000) at MCA, Sydney and in the touring exhibition Gulliver’s Travels (2002/03). Currently completing a Doctor of Visual Art at Brisbane’s Griffith University, Batorowicz has most recently exhibited at the Institute of Modern Art in Readymade for which she collaborated with leading New Zealand artist Lisa Reihana and will next exhibit at the Ian Potter Centre, Melbourne in Fraught Tales.
RealTime issue #57 Oct-Nov 2003 pg. 7
