Drink me
It was all very well to say `Drink me,' but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. `No, I'll look first,' she said, `and see whether it's marked "poison" or not'; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
‘Drink me’ is a work of fragmentation and containment. A broken narrative of a violent rape, it questions our ability to accurately portray, interpret and witness the traumatic via the written and read.
The experience of rape for the survivor is so often swallowed and contained, becoming fragmented in time, a story told in shifting chapters of remembering and testimony.
Language is always open to interpretation, but what of the essence behind it? Even when the story as written word is non-fixed and broken are we still willing and able to 'swallow' the message, or is it only ever possible to re-shape the story to our own understanding and experiences?
‘Drink me’ was exhibited at f-generation: feminism, art, progressions, at George Paton Gallery, Melbourne 2015
