ATTAGIRL
Nicola Jackson
October 13 - October 24 1999

In ATTAGIRL Christchurch artist Nicola Jackson uses the bed as a symbolic starting point to make observations about childhood. Much more than just a piece of furniture, in this work the bed is a site of contradictions, occupying an arbitrary space between waking and sleeping where a child can be alternately rested, displayed, amused, nursed, and disciplined.

By installed different sized quilted beds in the gallery, and changing the scale of each bed, Jackson represents different stages in a child's physical and psychological development. From the cot or cradle, one of the most potent symbols of infancy in the popular imagination, to the Queen size, each of these beds provokes a different series of questions about the complexities of childhood.