Who’s Playing Who (pre-order)

The Playboy Bunny is a symbol loaded with contradiction. Created within an industry that built much of its identity around the male gaze, it has become equally recognisable as an image of female sexuality, one that women themselves have continued to wear, reference and claim.

This painting takes an image of Kate Moss deliberately pulling down her top to expose herself. The focus of this painting is the question of agency within the piece. She participates in creating an image knowingly presenting herself as desirable.

This painting asks whose bodies are considered desirable, whether women are given autonomy within sexual imagery, and whether a woman's sexuality is treated as one part of her identity of the source of her value.

It raises a question: when a woman willingly participates int he same desire that has historically been used to objectify them, is she reclaiming power from it or participating in the system that created it?

The playboy costume immediately places her within a familiar language of sexuality and the male gaze. Yet the most significant element of this painting is the act of her pulling down her own top. She is actively exposing herself.

The work blurs the boundary between being sexual and being sexualised. Desire becomes a currency but it remains unclear who ultimately determines its value.

This painting questions whether we can criticise the sexualisation of women without beginning to criticise women's sexuality itself. The piece is not intending to present sexualisation as inherently empowering, it also does not ignore the history of women's bodies being commodified. Nudity itself is not inherently sexual, and sexuality is not inherently degrading. A woman choosing to present herself sexually does not automatically surrender ownership of her body.

There is danger in responding to objectification by simply asking women to become less sexual. When liberation begins to dictate how much of her body she should show, what she should wear or how openly she should express desire, it risks becoming another form of control.

The painting offers no judgement regarding the Playboy Bunny as either empowering or exploitative. Instead it asks: can a woman knowingly inhabit an image created for the male gaze without allowing that gaze to define her?

Canvas paper prints are ideal for framing. Stretched canvas over bars arrives ready to hang as a finished artwork.

Print Measurements:

A4: 21 x 29.7cm

A3: 29.7cm x 42cm

A2: 42cm x 59.4cm

A1: 59.4cm x 84.1cm

A0: 84.1cm x 118.9cm