Slutz Vote by Alice Lang, 2020

This artwork measures 1.56 metres wide by 1.14 metres high and is entitled Slutz Vote. Lang’s work often incorporates text and symbols from recent history and popular culture, to explore ways in which language, speech and text can be used to oppress or liberate a body. Here text made from marbled decorative paper, is assembled in large format to spell out a slogan ‘Slutz Vote’, with five uppercase letters towards the top of the work, and 4 uppercase letters, the same size below. Each letter is cut out individually with a wavy outline and collaged and glued on to the surface of the paper. The marbled paper has a floral, paisley pattern rendered in bright pinks, purples, greens, blues, and black bewildering in its effect on the viewer as it is overcome by the repetitive swirls and arches of predominately pink and orange found beyond. The busy pattern moulds and melts upon itself emblematic of the psychedelic era of the 1960’s and 1970’s and a counterculture movement and time of immense social, political, and cultural change.

Radiating out from these letters are meticulously painted outlines drawn in pink, blue, orange and purple that seem to shift and vibrate as they stretch out from each letter to the furthest corners of the work. The vacillating colours and lines characteristic of a time of hallucinatory drugs and exploration of consciousness, individualism, beatniks and hippies. The text unashamedly states ‘Slutz Vote’ with Slutz spelled out as S-L-U-T-Z.

Lang’s use of materials traditionally associated with craft, such as puffy paint and marbled paper, boldly addresses the historical devaluation of feminised labour and materials. This repossession is echoed in the use of the word ‘Slut’, and the jarring scale and decontextualisation that comes with competing with psychedelia for the viewer’s attention. The politically charged ‘Slutz Vote’ examines how capitalism and the patriarchy combine to determine that a woman’s “value” resides in their body by seeking to control female bodily autonomy whilst women actively take back ownership of the label ‘Slut’ and attempt to subvert its derogatory connotations as a form of reclamation.