About the artist Mike Kelley. Thanks as ever to the angels who support the comic. I love you. Also if you would like to become one of those angels you can do that here Pateron.com/tomorjudy or paypal.me/inkandbricks
Everything is Somewhat Repaired: I think the artist Mike Kelley was an egg... and I'm kinda upset about it. CW Closet Stuff
There are the closeted trans girl cliches like the noise band, dark sense of humour w/ complex irony, cute long hair and the sadness.
(from Ectoplasm Photographs 1978/2009)
But there's also the archiving and obsession with childhood. Then later investments in biographical archeology and repressed memories.
(Repressed Spatial Relationships Rendered as Fluid, 2002)
The personal buried in the academic.
(Untitled (Dust), 1994-1999)
The religious upbringing that you just can't shake.
(Castrati Satan, 1995)
the desire for softness which feels somehow alienated or distant.
(from Arena series, 1990)
I guess by this I don't mean he was an egg. Hell I hardly know him and making these assumptions isn't exactly fair. In his talk at walker arts centre he in fact seems super resentful of people making assumptions about him.*
(Catholic Birdhouse, 1978)
It's more that I see parts of myself in his work. Parts of myself that were desperately trying to figure out I was trans without wanting to look the obvious in the face.
(Figure II (Hair), 1989)
* The practice of transing of historical figures is mostly kind of goofy and at worst a bit rude and presumptuous. But also if projecting onto past culture helps you understand where you are now then I think it's useful. I feel like that's what a lot of his work was actually about in fact.
* After I wrote this, I read an interview between him and Lynn Hershman about gender and feminism. It was fascinating and didn't exactly halt my suspicions.
https://americansuburbx.com/2015/02/the-late-mike-kelley-on-freak-culture-feminism-and-the-gender-unequal-art-world.html
"(I was) wearing girls’ clothes on occasion, wearing finger nail polish or sewing things ...just for the pleasure of pissing off my father." lol
