A young woman parades down a catwalk carrying eggs on her head. The domestic goddess – glamorous, fierce and fecund. The Bearer reflects upon women's roles in society, where women are both glamour models and mothers. It questions western society where women have a do-it-all mentality, where Posh spice and Madonna are our role models. It references other societies where women live solely in the domestic sphere.

The egg represents the weight of responsibility that is held by women both as mothers, carers and the creators of the next generation. It represents the decision to have or not to have. The heels remind us 'no pain, no gain'.

 

'The Elevator Program for early career artists brings us Dublin-based Michelle Browne’s The Bearer: a pithy and succinct snapshot of contemporary western feminist paradoxes. “Glamorously” dressed in a black low-cut corseted top, tulip skirt and painfully high stilettos, Browne takes hen-eggs from a bowl and perches them on top of her nest-like coiffure. In a finishing school routine taken to extremes, she checks this crown in an oval fairytale mirror, turns and struts as if parading down a catwalk. Her precise, clipped, supermodel sashay aggressively suggests she is off to war. As she flounces along, the eggs fall, smashing heavily in her wake.

 

Elenor Hadley Kershaw, Real Arts Magazine March 2009

 

Performed at:

The National Review of Live Art, Scotland. February 09.

Interakcje Performance Festival, Poland. May 09.

European Performance Art Festival, Poland October 09.