You Don't Own Me

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Isthisit’s 23rd exhibition was titled ‘You Don’t Own Me’, taken from Lesley Gore’s song of the same name. The song focuses around the singer telling a lover that he does not own her, that he is not to tell her what to do or what to say, and that he is not to put her on display. This was a starting point for this week’s show, which attempts to take a glimpse into the portrayal of women in the online world, as well as in first world societies. Each work is centralised around Amy Dunwoody’s film ‘I'm Addicted to You’ which endeavours to present an uncanny reflection of screen-saturated teen culture and questions whether our internet obsessed society has damaged both generation Y and Z’s feminine subjectivity. Bearing this in mind, all the other works find themselves implicitly responding to her video, simply by locational association. This is an interesting phenomenon to consider going forward. Nicola Parker’s series of photographs ‘Perfection Obscura’ considers ideas of body image and how the very meaning of beauty has gradually changed over generations while Rose Sinclair Doyle’s fragile sculpture ‘Obey’ seeks to symbolise the hidden psychological abuse that can occur within a marriage. A collaborative video work by Sian Fann and Susi Disorder is the final piece of this week’s puzzle, considering an idea of ‘the selfie’ alongside female identity in the digital age. Inserting the artist into an 80s esque digital landscape, we see the multiple figures being slowly consumed by the screen until there is no more. “You don't own me, I'm not just one of your many toys, You don't own me, Don't say I can't go with other boys.”

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​​Curated by Bob Bicknell-Knight