Grater Expectations: Issue 4

Grater

Expectations

Salutations!

Hello and good day to all fellow feminist enthusiasts, comrades, allies...whatever you want to call yourself. It’s certainly none of my business. Yet I thank you for joining us once again as we embrace our vitality and power to produce some lovely bodythemed content. Who doesn’t love some graphic art and satire to pass the time with? We come to you with a splurge of colour to brighten up ourselves as a distraction from the misery that pervades our existence. Perhaps I’m being dramatic. But that’s none of your business. You know what, just read the damn thing and you’ll understand. But please, do enjoy.

Ms. Anthropy x x

Contributors: Alice Fraser Darcy Bounsall Felicity Wareing Iona Jenkins Issy Macleod Maria de Araújo Riddhi Kanetkar

Artist Spotlight: Elly Smallwood

Elly Smallwood is a Canadian artist, whose paintings focus on issues surrounding female sexuality, LGBTQ sex, fetishes, and related material. Her work has distinctly feminist undertones, as it often protests dominant, and inherently male, perceptions of female sexuality.

From observing Smallwood’s work, I can see that she has developed upon the foundations of what could be considered as the First Wave of feminist art. She has especially encapsulated an aspect of the feminine experience, by using vaginal imagery, the motif of flowers, and also staging her subjects in a composition that defies those expectations traditionally set for women.

Across her work, her colour palette remains consistent, with the employment of subtle warm pink, red, and orange hues. I especially loved how she has embraced the colour pink in her work, to extol feminine virtue. Whilst many contemporary female artists rejected this colour as a means of defying traditional socialisations (women = pink, men = blue), and opted for bright, bold colours, Smallwood’s use of the colour is nevertheless just as symbolic. In the Western sphere, for a long time, pink was associated with harmlessness, innocuity, and inevitable popularised as a feminine shade.

Yet, attempts to reject this association came at the expense of denigrating the virtues of femininity itself. However, the turn of the 21st century saw a reversion to accepting pink and diminishing the connotations of fragility that were previously attached to it. From the emergence of the ‘Gulabi Gang’ in India, to the dominance of pink in women’s protest marches, Smallwood’s work gives the colour pink a potency that previous artwork lacked. Her bold, statement uses of pink and red, to paint flowers, women’s genitals, as well as facial features, emancipates femininity from its connotations of fragility.

I also love the way in which Smallwood paints the female body; she has been known to use a variety of body types that deviate from the tradition female body that is often constructed under the male artistic gaze.

In particular, Smallwood’s amalgamation of flowers, superimposed onto a figure of the female body, both enhances the delicacy of it, whilst the bold outline attributes it with a degree of agency and power. The brush strokes are big, bold, and encompass the fluidity and ever-changing nature of the body - it is never static.

Smallwood uses expressionism as a medium to convey her ideas; her work therefore reflects her own perceptions of femininity and female sexuality. In my opinion, this underpins the very notion of feminism – the fact that there is no one set image that constitutes this theme, but rather it is an expression of all our individual thoughts and experiences. Her work demonstrates how art can be a powerful tool to express our identity and has Riddhi Kanetkar inspired me to create art in a more abstract, expressive way.

villanelle He is not with mercy crowned.

In the viscous inkwell of sullen night all love is not lost but drowned.

Morning stars are now earthbound, dewy pools that glisten with malice bright.

He is not with mercy crowned.

Our fevered fragments compound and as petrol-slicked hope is set alight, all love is not lost but drowned.

Pin-prick wrongs his mind does hound, a cauldron bubbling dead words that bite.

He is not with mercy crowned.

Hot salt hate as barks abound from weary souls. As dry spittle takes flight all love is not lost but drowned.

Though tidepools swirl in the splintering light, vein rivulets have not burst their banks, quite.

He is not with mercy crowned, all love is not lost but drowned.

Iona Jenkins Iona Jenkins

Leaving A white bundle lay in my lap the day the ships left. I didn’t know what to do with it. I smelled it.

It was clean. It was fresh linen, but it wasn’t mine. I could not call out: who gave me this linen?

I would look like a madwoman for not remembering, for not knowing how it had found its way to me.

I stood by a porthole with the white bundle in my hands. The line of the sea moved up and down, up and down the sky, and beyond it were our ships, and our men on board. I could see them swinging from the rigging. I rocked the linen like a baby, until I realised there was someone behind me and quickly turned around.

It was the young Admiral with the face of a woman. He had smooth skin and full lips, and big blue eyes, which he fixed on me now. The only thing that made his face a man’s was his jaw, which was hard. He came and stood beside me so the top of his head bobbed at my chin.

“Do you see?” he said. “The enemy are leaving. All their ships are leaving.”

He pressed a finger to the window. His nail was clean and small.

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. He muttered it to the floorboards. “I don’t know why they’re leaving.

Why are they leaving? Why?” Then he stepped back from the window and turned on his heel and marched into the belly of the ship. I had no doubt he would not remember me or our conversation. In all effect he had been talking to himself.

If the enemy really were leaving, then it was cause for celebration. They had been sharks in our waters since before I could remember. Perhaps Gabriel was disappointed because he had not yet had time to prove himself in fighting them, having only recently been appointed Admiral. He was very young and probably full of ambition. Although, he didn’t act that way. I pictured again his small clipped fingernail. His walk which had faded now into the ship’s darkness had been small and clipped to match.

That evening I stole ale from the cook and drank it in the shadows behind the barrels. When I emerged no-one was any the wiser, but the boy’s face swam before me as he handed me the letter.

“You. You take this to the big man,” he said, and smiled at his joke. “I haven’t got the time.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“His quarters. And be quick about it.”

The air on deck was cool and salted. I breathed it in like it was more drink, then went into the upper quarters where corridors lurched beneath my feet. I stopped suddenly. Who was that boy? What had he given me? And then I saw I was already at the Admiral’s door, and my fist was knocking on it.

“Come in!” someone called.

There was a great huddle of men’s backs. Their faces blinked over it. I saw Gabriel at the head of the table and walked towards him. As I did, he rose from where he’d been leaning forward, and as he straightened, his eyes stayed fixed on mine. They stayed fixed on mine all the time I walked towards him.

“Thank you,” he said when I handed him the letter.

As I closed the door, their voices rose in chorus. They were shouting. I noticed that I was holding the linen again.

And the following morning it was there too. A shadow passed over its clean whiteness, bright in the sun, and I looked up to see an albatross circling the empty sky. There was movement in the corner of my eye: a large belly, a red shirt. I turned, expecting to see a man. I expected to see him holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun, staring out to sea. There was no-one there.

“So, you’re his favourite?”

I turned to see two boys behind me, grinning from under their caps and the cloth wrapped around their heads. One of them had blood crusted over his ear lobe. I wondered if he knew.

“Whose favourite?” I said.

“The baby Admiral,” crooned the bloody one. “Apparently he’s taken a liking to you.”

Suddenly they took off their caps. I followed where their eyes had gone, and saw Gabriel himself standing up on the top deck, his hands folded behind his back. After a moment he looked down

at me, and I looked up, and for a short while the four of us stayed fixed like that. Then Gabriel nodded and walked away.

That night he found me and I wasn’t surprised. He sat before me in the candlelit dark, his knees apart, his folded hands hanging between them. I put my needlework aside.

“That letter you gave me. Do you know what it said?” he asked.

“No.” “It was from the leader of the enemy. Written directly to me. He wants to speak with me. He wants to explain why they’ve gone. He’s invited me to stay with him.”

Here Gabriel paused. I realised he was waiting for me to say something.

“Why should you care for his explanation?”

“You don’t think I should go.”

“Surely it’s a trap?”

Gabriel ran a hand over his face. “Perhaps.”

Of course it was. And it was insulting. But what was I supposed to say about it? I didn’t know what he wanted me to think. I hadn’t realised he would want to talk at all.

“Just tell me,” he said. “Just tell me what you think I should do.”

Something wet and heavy made itself felt in my hand. It was the linen, dripping dark blood onto the floor. A low moaning filled the air. At moments, it seemed like it would turn into song.

A mourning song, in a language I didn’t know. The enemy’s language.

I could tell he did not hear it. He was watching me. I took in his woman’s face. The softness of his skin, apart from the palms where it was rough. What would that roughness feel like dragged over me?

“Don’t go,” I said. “Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go.”

“Alright,” he said, but his eyes had drifted, and I saw the decision made behind them. The following week he left.

Issy Macleod

7 pains It started with your mother, The rough move that spilled you inside of her.

The oxytocin that purged you from her velvet.

It moved on to the blood running down your legs, As tears streamed down your face.

The salt and iron reminded you of pennies And you wondered at the dismissiveness.

Sooner or later, you’ll Find the knife between your legs, And slice whichever times he decides to hurt you unwillingly.

You’ll squirm under the benign sterile glove, Who’ll steal the secrets you were to uncover.

Blood might bloom within you, And spew out as sore red tears.

Drained and sole, You’ll mourn the discharge This mass will change into nothing, Its darkness to swallow you as did your mother’s.

The curdled miracle will make you scream, A swan song of deviled sweetness.

Spread open and mangled...

You’ll weep with the joy Of your mother And every mother before her.

When the softness curls up In hot tendrils of ash and smoke, Don’t despair for the wetness of your mind, Thoughts nimble and sticky, Your bubbling body will hold the horizon still.

The sky will weep into the earth and you’ll remain - the trampled pathos of the world.

Maria de Araújo

Grater Expections is an intersectional feminist zine and younger sister publication of the Cheese Grater Magazine.

Have you got something you’ve written, drawn, or had enough of?

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zine@cheesegratermagazine.org Editor: Iona Jenkins