As one of society’s last taboos, incest is whispered, hidden, and ignored. My work challenges this taboo by drawing directly from my personal experience as a survivor of childhood incest. My intentional choice of childhood materials and methods provide me, as a feminist artist, the ability to communicate my survival, leading me to identify the words of these works as ‘survival messages’, a term that was coined to describe how artists can communicate traumatic experiences in text and form.
My practice transports the viewer into my childhood of abuse. My childhood memories are limited because of a fourteen-year period of incest and childhood sexual abuse inflicted on me by my father. This led to me developing dissociative amnesia to feel safe.
These works celebrate my survival. They are deeply personal and move the taboo subject matter from private spaces, locked rooms and silenced voices to a public forum and domestic space – a push and pull between perpetrator and survivor.
Digital images taken by Chrissie Smith, Federation University. Thank you to Chrissie for taking my mixed media works into a digital context.
A1 prints (edition of 10 per work) are available for purchase. Please contact Lauren to buy. Original works and A5 prints are available at the Soft Rage exhibition.
Works top to bottom:
Lauren Matthews, Survival Messages: Survivor, 2021, digital photograph of mixed media work.
Lauren Matthews, Survival Messages: Innocence, 2021, digital photograph of mixed media work.
Lauren Matthews, Survival Messages: Daughter, 2021, digital photograph of mixed media work.
Lauren Matthews, Survival Messages: Childhood, 2021, digital photograph of mixed media work.
This is a series of works created as part of my Honours research examining ‘(TEXT)iles: How Feminist Artists Communicate Survival Messages Through Material Thinking’.
My work presents a domestic setting and stems from a single image of my father and my childhood self. At first glance, this image is as a father gazing lovingly at his child, but once immersed in the work, a sinister interpretation emerges.
Installation photographs by Chris Dart.
Work 1:
Lauren Matthews, All the Girls, 2022, hooped embroidery on linen with cotton thread.
A recently finished embroidery work. Sometimes you need to get your frustration out about the global weakening of reproductive rights by stabbing something thousands of times. I think about all the children who have to, or may have to, give birth to their abusers child. To add further pain the baby they have to carry could be their own genetic sibling, or cousin. The voices of incest survivors must not be silenced in these discussions about abortion access.
Work 2:
Lauren Matthews, And the Women Poured the Tea, 2020, mixed media installation, collection of the artist.
This work was to be displayed in the Sunday School Building at Scrub Hill Church in Newlyn (a town in Central Victoria). Inspiration for the work came about as the exhibition was initially comprised of only male artists, however when the owners of the space realised that, I was invited to exhibit.
While I was sitting in the Sunday School, I noticed a photograph of the church in the late 19th Century, where women were on one side, and men on the other. It led me to think about the role of women in both rural and church communities. Women would set up the hall, pour tea and sit off to one side of the building. In response to this I created a tea service exploring feminist theory and traditional concepts of women’s domestic roles, particularly in rural communities. I will explore the role of traditional women’s work and struggle – from the objects used, depictions and technical skills, including embroidery.
Artist. Researcher. Activist. Instigator. Collaborator.
I am available to facilitate and chair discussions around art, feminism, LGBTIQ+ and rainbow families, art and mental health. I am also able to conduct workshops on craftivism and textiles.
I have Complex-PTSD, OCD, Generalised Anxiety Disorder, and Major Depression. I talk about breaking down stereotypes, the value of art and social change and also surviving incest.
I have some interesting stories to tell.
Photographs: Facilitating. In Conversation with Clementine Ford & Maia Irell. In Conversation with Jay Carmichael. Photographs by Juanita Broderick.