• About Mary Kelly


    Extase [1986]
    6 laminated photo positive screenprints and acrylic on perspex, each 122 x 91.5 cm
    Purchased with the assistance of the Eastern Arts Association 1986.

    This work is part of a larger series, Corpus, which is divided into five sections (Menacé, Appel, Supplication, Erotisme and Extase), part of the Interim installation that Kelly was working whilst Artist Fellow at Kettle’s Yard and New Hall (1985/86). The titles are terms used by J.M. Charcot, the French nineteenth-century neuropathologist, whose studies of female hysteria influenced Freud.  Kelly uses the conventions of fashion, popular medicine and romantic fiction to parody modern stereotypical images of women.  Born in Minnesota, Mary Kelly lived in Britain for many years but has now returned to the States.