Looking at the Woman in a Bomb Blast
A slender young woman falls backwards, blown off her feet by a bomb. Frozen in time, her bare legs stick up, her hands grasping the air. Her face is covered by a page from a newspaper. People approach to look at her, bending down to study the folds of her dress, the immature curve of her thigh, her neat toes, splayed in surprise.
Summary
The woman is a sculpture, made by the Irish artist F. E. McWilliam in 1974. In this bronze figure’s awkwardly graceful near-death contortions, entire histories of pain, death, sex and visual pleasure have been condensed.
Looking at the Woman in a Bomb Blast is an experimental artist’s book that uses different voices to unravel these histories: a writer labours over an elaborate ‘explanation’ of what she means, while the voice of the Woman herself offers acerbic insights and asides. In a series of short chapters, they assert their contrasting ideas, insisting on their own approaches to discovering her ‘true meaning’: by turns affective, confessional, detached and analytical.
This is the first volume in a new series ArtMonitor:Voices launched in 2025 with the mission to publish experimental work that bridges artistic research with other research traditions from within and beyond the university.
Author
Daniel Jewesbury
2025
Language
The book is in English.
ISBN
Print edition:
978-91-989729-4-8
