Deportment for Young Ladies is a set of accessories comprising of a thimble, hairbrush, hair bobble, hair bow and (knuckle)duster.

Growing up as a teenager during the 80s was a time of conflicted emotions and desires – as this period is for all adolescents. For me the tangy dissonance of rebellion and possibilities was overshadowed by vestiges of the repression of female power and sexuality that pervaded the middleclass suburbs of Brisbane. This cognitive dissonance still evokes a sense of furtive desire.

Feminism was encroaching on the status quo but growing up at this time my popular culture idols were at odds with the lessons learnt at my mother’s side. Cooking, cleaning, and needlecraft were still very much in the feminine domain, and this domesticity was to be maintained while well-groomed and well behaved.

These objects reference items associated with femineity. Using my own hair (a plait that I had saved for decades) I suggest new uses for these domestic objects.