Superior Goods and Household Gods @ Castlefield Gallery, Manchester

Superior Goods and Household Gods is part of Wonder Women 2015, Manchester’s annual feminist festival, under the banner of which fall exhibitions, events and activities throughout the city in March. The work on display at Castlefield Gallery seeks to respond to dominant ideologies and their effect on our desires, and the exhibition challenges the visitor to question preconceptions of sex, sexuality and the imagery used to represent women.

Striking throughout is a sense of contrast and disorientation. The initial installation, Palm Springs (2015) by Hannah Farrell, submerges both the viewer and the artist’s subject in a disjointed, partially mirrored world, exploring in a fantastical way how women have been presented in advertising. This theme is echoed in two collages by Sarah Hardacre which unsettlingly mix erotic images from vintage magazines with harsh, black and white images of women in urban environments from times gone by. Hardacre's third work daringly crosses a ballerina with the label from a bondage video. Seeing these contrasts really gives one pause for thought about the difference between a sexualised or idealised view of women and the truth of ‘real life.’

Arnold Pollock’s Castlefield Gallery Posedown (2015) is a video record of the exhibition’s preview. The event starts as anyone might expect but then becomes quite surreal as Pollock and an international female bodybuilder face off among the visitors. The looks of anticipation and surprise, coupled with a tentative wolf-whistle from a bystander, very clearly show the level of uncomfortable nonchalance in a typical exhibition-opening crowd. Adham Faramawy’s Total Flex (2012) is a nine-minute (approx.) loop of a man exercising to a disco beat, naked but for a bondage harness. The man continues a range of movement, but is curiously desexualised.

The third audiovisual work comes from Suzanne Posthumus, with Butter Wouldn’t Melt (2014). Incredibly hypnotic, the work circulates through a series of partly censored pornographic images. In the manner of subliminal advertising, the visuals are backed by a soundtrack that is apparently ever-rising in tone, asking the viewer to consider how and why sex is sold. This one might be best avoided by those who are prone to migraines or epileptic fits, as the cycle of images flashes past very quickly.

One not-to-be-missed work is He’s Only a Bunny Boy But He’s Quite Nice Really (2011) by Margaret Harrison, who founded the London Women’s Liberation Art Group in 1970. The drawing is a reconstruction of a previous work which vanished from a 1971 London show, which in turn was closed down by the police after just one day on the grounds of indecency. It is both stunning and extremely disconcerting to see Hugh Hefner depicted in the famous Playboy Bunny ‘suit’ worn by waitresses and hostesses in Hefner’s Playboy Clubs all over the world to this day.