Dance elsewhere, not on my eye patch: Works by Violet Fingers.

C&C Gallery are proud to present 'Dance elsewhere, not on my eye patch'; Violet Fingers uses drawing, video, sculpture, prose and performance to create installations concerning class, sex, identity and gender politics. 'She wants to create a rash on the gallery walls, to make the viewer itch', playing on the interstice of power and obedience. 'The double collusion and action of titbit, chocolaty treats for obedience - when the chocolate has melted and coats the fingers - nothing so soft and warm as a dogs tongue. Dripping milk, swollen breasts - cupboard love - greasy fingers slipping morsels beneath the table. Even as I write this my loved one gazes adoringly, her head upon my lap. Does she love me? Or is it my sultanas - I feel a warm glow of generosity, she never satiated - but convinced of my love' Fingers has been making multi-media work for the last 20 years, she has achieved some national recognition - performing in the National Review of Live Art at the ICA in 1992, her work toured with the Becks Futures show of 2001 - however Fingers has remained largely under the mainstream artworld radar for the same reasons that many female artists do. Working through a time of 'in-house' feminist conflict, 'post feminism' and the rapid expansion of feminist theories she is now an integral and important part of a current new generation feminist revival. Often starting with prose, her work can include video, sculpture, performance and drawings. She questions the nature of sexual identity in relation to the objectification of female bodies. Fingers' work originated with her questioning and attempting to provide a re-reading of Freudian and Lacanian texts taking into account, amongst others, the position of French feminists and 'bad girl' theory. Her works imply female perversion, toying with the psychoanalytic theory that women cannot be fetishists. Through her work she questions the position of woman as hysteric, as possessing a lack of voice and gaze, by positioning herself as, at first object, subject and author. She makes use of the female body in performance as spectacle, using strategies of seductive visual indulgence. Often combining video projections with monitors, simultaneously playing disconnected loops she creates uneasy environments that verge on the disturbingly bizarre. That question and subvert 'the given'. Fingers generates hypnotic narratives whilst her drawings promote the 'violent' hybridisation of women and dogs. Graduated MA Goldsmiths College, Fingers has exhibited in the UK, Norway, Holland and Sweden. Her work can be found in both private and public collections.