Existing comment:
Pat Larter (1936–1996, British, lived in Australia)
Mail art to John Held Jr., 1981
Pat Larter was a British-born, Australia-based artist who emerged as one of the most prominent participants in the international mail art movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Her films, performances, and mail art interrogated the gendering of the body and parodied what she called "male-given sexual stereotypes." With ostentatious outfits and exaggerated poses, she disrupted the binaries and hierarchies that structure gender and sexual relations. Her mail art, which served to document and extend her performances, calls attention to the male gaze and stresses sexual liberation through gender-bending erotica. Subverting the male dominance of mail art, it was Larter who first coined the term "fe-mail art." Her postal performances thus offer an alternative reality of how to "get arted."
-- Mary Savig |