Jacqueline Spedding, Tender Cruelties (installation view), 1996. Photograph by artist.

Jacqueline Spedding, Tender Cruelties (installation view), 1996. Photograph by artist.

Jacqueline Spedding, Tender Cruelties (installation view), 1996. Photograph by artist.

TENDER CRUELTIES, SYDNEY COLLEGE OF THE ARTS, 1996

Tender Cruelties, ceramics, mixed media (soap, human hair, metal, polyester shower curtains, found chair).

Bathroms, more than any other domestic spaces, bring into focus the body and its excesses. Bathrooms and bodies are locked together in daily rituals of elimination; of hair, dead skin, fingernails and other bodily excretions. Tubs, basins, showers, soap racks, cabinets, mats and towels articulate a flow of activity from which we emerge reinvented. Bathrooms are spaces of retreat and reflection but also of trauma; this installation explores how our bodies shape, and are shaped by, the objects and spaces we inhabit.