Maddy Plimmer

originally published in:
The Tomorrow People catalogue essay
2017

The Tomorrow People
Curated by Christina Barton, Stephen Cleland and Simon Gennard
22 July – 1 October 2017

A white jumpsuit is embroidered with the names and logos of various medications and medical creams, covering the suit like racing emblems. The crisp, sterile material implies medical treatment, yet it is not a hospital gown. Instead, the jumpsuit has a hidden fastening down the front, and emphasizes a specific removal of access to the body: ‘impenetrable’.

Embroidery not only reflects a history of limited social mobility and options for women, but is also affiliated with the patriarchal hierarchy within art, and the distinction between the fine arts and decorative arts. Despite countless feminist artists who have used embroidery as an act of defiance and reclamation, it is still often relegated to outside the art gallery. The choice of selection and projection of these logos onto an external ‘other’ body-like form enables an externalised evaluation of the practical value of these labels on Maddy’s own terms - placing what has been prescribed to her onto something instead that she elects to contemplate.

Although Maddy removes herself physically from the work, the jumpsuit stands in for her body, the legs and sleeves softly hanging. For over a year and a half, she has sought medical treatment for an as of yet undiagnosed medical condition. Refusing to provide her with the necessary referral to a gynecologist for specialist treatment, a string of doctors have instead elected to prescribe Maddy with medication to treat her symptoms, but without diagnosing or treating the underlying condition. Each medication shown here has been prescribed; the crowded logos dot the unseen body, medicalisation envisioned at the expense of individual autonomy and identity.

Gatekeeping systematically limits public access to healthcare services, in order to reduce demand and cost. A referral from a primary source healthcare provider is necessary, and negates individual autonomy, and the authority of knowledge of self. Untreated and undiagnosed gynecological problems are common; not only because of lack of access to appropriate services, and the permissible but unwanted physical contact one must navigate in examinations -- but also due to the physical symptoms of an underlying issue being routinely dismissed as a psychological problem. Dismissing painful and uncomfortable symptoms as instead a problem of ‘symptom perception’ against possible threats moves the priority from essential medical treatment and diagnostics to individual’s responsibility and mental health.

One logo, title here, displays gendered marketing techniques in an optimistically cursive script. Although Maddy never asked for it or used it, a doctor prescribed this for her- a numbing vaginal lubricant. Encouraged to use it so she was able to have sexual intercourse, it is a particularly heteronormative assumption she needed it, entrenched in rape culture and prioritisation of a male partner’s pleasure at the expense of her own comfort. It also seemed that. Possessing ‘female’ anatomy, yet none of the function; her doctors’ dictations seem desirous of constructing a semblance of biological heteronormative usage and solving this issue of ‘female’ dysfunctionality rather than finding the cause of the pain.