Suffragette Revealed

Rae Flack's images caught the mood

A caged female stares at an audience arriving

Fresh flowers are treated to a trim, stalks first, heads last, all across the boards

Barricaded in, furniture encloses me

Petals scattered, scissor blades are turned to my prim attire

Blouse pierced I hack at sleeves and torso

Flesh revealed, I freeze in crazed stupor

Rae Flack's collages

My thighs are thick with an effervescing femininity as I perform Emmeline Pankhurst

Stripping in stages to discordant Schoenberg;  a feminist raging release from her clothes

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In the early 20th Century Suffragettes gathered at what is now the Battersea Arts Centre for radical meetings. Now this theme is recaptured with theatrical intent. A director instructs me to move subtly as I take the scissors to my garments. But it’s all in the moment, and I just can’t help myself.

There is something extremely potent about tearing one’s clothes off with total abandon, so I just go with it like a wild woman. Yet each impulsive thrust is followed by my contemplative stillness; I hold back for a unique build up of my own sexual tension, not directed to this audience, if only to the one in my mind.

Every performance has a new costume for me to destroy. The artists cut me up too, collages created, and a violent, sexy undressing given shape.

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