ZOË BAILEY/GIRL SHIT

Zoë Bailey/ GIRL SHIT is a Brighton UK-based multidisciplinary artist known for her radical, satirical, and allegorical explorations of female narratives.

She has an eclectic practice realised through oil paintings, sculpture, installation, drawing, printmaking, collage, and DIY artist merch- a practice formed in art school and later inspired by a collision of post-punk subcultures.

Whilst re-navigating the art world after becoming a mother, resistance to the female-led conversations within her work- often dismissed as “girl shit”or “girl stuff”-prompted the adoption and ownership of the name GIRL SHIT.

Her artistic enquiries are often explored through a series- for example the ongoing Eve project- but themes are also intertwined and repeating. The work questions and explores the female form and identity from a personal, historical, mythological and political standpoint.

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KISS THE SKY

The exhibition KISS THE SKY comes from a body of work made in response to questions about glass ceilings: what they confine, and what might happen if they didn’t exist. It also draws on the power of the mantra “pull yourself together, put on your lipstick and create a spell”- where glamour becomes a nod to the witch.

I am fascinated by feminine rituals and by the contradictions embedded in feminism and the glamour industries: film, vintage magazines, make-up, old Hollywood- the star and the harlot.

I have collected vintage magazines since childhood, and the Goddess manifests in the images of women across those pages. In vintage girlie magazines there is no Photoshop, no cosmetic surgery, no singular “type”; each woman carries a story of what if, or what would she say.

The history of the female body is layered with guilt: fertility control and religious oppression entwined, girls weighed down by warnings and tales of fallen women who did not listen to what they were told.

In my world, these fallen women-the harlots and pin up girls- are reimagined as empowered Goddesses, offered up for our adoration.