Breaking the Stigma
Why is there so much negativity surrounding women and their menstrual cycles? Asks Abbie Holbrook and she uses her own personal experiences to start conversations around hormonal contraceptives and the menstrual cycle through textile-based art.
Abbie Holbrook (b. 1998) is an emerging artist and designer born in Wagga Wagga in regional New South Wales. Abbie moved to Canberra in 2018 and is currently completing her Bachelor in Visual Arts and Design at the Australian National University. Predominantly working in textiles, she combines her skillset in design to create interesting graphic text-based works that translate the digital to the physical. This has led Abbie to undertake visual research into the reactionary relationship between text, textiles, and the body through text-based works, existing across 2D and 3D planes.
Abbie is working in sculpture, using soft fabrics and materials such as spandex, polyfill, and calico which are partnered with letters and words to drive meaning. Soft Forms, Hard Truths made earlier this year stemmed from the artist’s interest in stream-of-consciousness writing. The twelve-metre-long winding structure features a single sentence that is hand-painted across the surface. This work speaks to being a twenty-something-year-old woman navigating life, the dilemmas of being a good person, what success looks like, and about other people projecting their insecurities onto you. Here, the artist directly involves herself in the installation where the soft forms and hard truths consume her from ground to ceiling.
“I love really short sharp phrases, but I also love stream of consciousness writing.”
The importance of text in this work stems from the artist’s objective to generate conversation. The use of text has the capacity to directly speak to the artist’s message. Although, the installation itself is abstract the text acts as a point of familiarity for the viewer.
Soft Forms, Hard truths and I Really Have Trouble Sleeping is when Abbie begins to manifest her interests in the female experience. Both works draw on the artist’s feelings at the time, fears around becoming pregnant, and feeling emotional during the time of her period. Abbie is currently working on a continuation of these ideas surrounding women’s relationship with their menstrual cycle and further investigating the language surrounding it both in the sense of stigma in advertising and in personal conversations with friends. Furthermore, questioning why women use hormonal contraceptives such as the pill and how little we really know about it. When asked what sparked the idea for this project Abbie said:
“I had a big realisation that I didn’t know enough throughout those years of being on the pill and being on hormonal contraception to be on it in the first place and in that I started researching.”
After conducting a series of interviews asking women questions about their period and contraceptives for a body of work in 2020, Abbie became inspired by this subject and wanted to dig deeper. During the interview process, it quickly became apparent that for many women it was the first time they had spoken openly about their period. This, along with the artist’s own lived experiences, initiated Abbie’s motivation to speak on these issues surrounding women. “There needs to be a conversation around that, there needs to be I guess like a menstrual revolution.”
Abbie is aligning herself with feminist writers and menstrual advocates such as Karen Pickering, Dr. Jane Bennett, and Lucy Peach as well as renowned artists Barbra Kruger and Jenny Holzer.
“I guess everyone knows Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger, but I hadn’t looked at them until recently actually, I realised that their text-based work stood true and resonated with me.”
Abbie feels that there is a real simplicity in these artist’s work that holds great impact.
“Their work gets people thinking which gets people talking, that’s what I hope for my work.”
Abbie combines the realms of text and textiles as they hold meaning for her as an artist and help convey her overarching themes. She has always loved working with textiles and believes that textile has the capacity to hold meaning due to its history in women’s work and craft origins.
“The textiles draw on that state of being on our period when we need softness and comfort when we’re at our most vulnerable.”
Abbie has exhibited in group shows Through the Looking Glass at E3 Gallery in Wagga Wagga and Gallery 76 in Sydney, Tripstych at Gallery 76 in Sydney, and was the winner of the ANU Interhall Art Shows in 2018 and 2019. Abbie was awarded the Marie Yeardly Scholarship by the Embroiderer’s Guild of NSW, for a largescale embroidered portrait of her grandmother, who encouraged and influenced her love of textiles.