The untold role of social media in supporting the $1 billion-dollar Australian cosmetic surgery industry is exposed in the latest artistic collaboration of visual artist Jay Younger and performer Lisa O’Neill, MEAT MIRROR, debuting on Saturday 8 May at Mappin’s Nursery West End as part of Anywhere Festival and Brisbane Art Design (BAD).
The 10-minute performance-activated multi-media installation throws beauty, humour, butchery, gullibility, satire and horror into the blender and presses ‘go’; confronting audiences with the consequences of social media gaslighting women to undergo unnecessary, and at times life-threatening surgery.
Jay Younger, Visual Artist and Adjunct Professor at Queensland College of Art (QCA) explains the pair were inspired by ABC Four Corners story, Beauty’s New Normal. “Australians now spend big bucks on cosmetic procedures — sometimes with fatal consequences. While statistics show that cosmetic surgery is a booming business, they don’t tell us the a?ective side of this frightening story encouraged by the toxic mirror of social media,” Co-Director Jay Younger said. “Rather than dry, ine?ective statistics, MEAT MIRROR’s impact lies in the artwork’s focus on the vulnerability and coercion experienced by the beauty industry’s female targets.”
Co-Director and performer Lisa O’Neill, Director of Acting and Performance at TAFE Queensland/ Canberra University Brisbane says the contemporary urge for conformity fuelled by social media is central in MEAT MIRROR. “We wanted to use the metaphor of the synchronised swimmer as a conformist uniform body – in this instance encouraged by ‘likes’ and ‘follows’ on social media,” O’Neill said. “In MEAT MIRROR, audiences will witness the unrelenting pressure applied by social media which leads to absurd, yet unfortunately very real consequences.”
Jay Younger is a visual artist with more than 30 years of practice, whose work has been exhibited extensively both in Australia and overseas and has maintained a long-term interest in making art that pops up in unpredicted spaces. Performing artist and director Lisa O’Neill, has spent more than 25 years working across dance, theatre, contemporary performance, and new media and has constantly challenged the limits of performance.
Joined into the MEAT MIRROR collaboration are Guy Webster (sound designer), Georgie Pinn (animator), Chelsea O’Brien and Cara Coombe (mentees). Following the premiere performances in Brisbane, MEAT MIRROR will have a second season throughout June at The Walls on the Gold Coast.
For showtimes please visit Anywhere Festival or Brisbane Art Design.
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