A feminist exhibition where it’s OK to laugh

Pat’s manspreading.

Those who pass by outside a window of Invercargill’s He Waka Tuia art museum might see the back of a giant figure comfortably dominating a park bench, and duck in to check it out.

Turns out, upon closer inspection, that Pat’s a person of the female persuasion, though she’s taking up more space than might generally be expected of a woman.

Not just because she’s supersized, but because – well, let’s say she’s openly relaxing.

But she’s also sufficiently at ease that folk do tend to want to sit companionably beside her. Not that she seems to need them to be OK.

Pat’s gravitational pull is helping to attract people to the Configure:Home exhibition examining the relationships between feminist figurative works and the home.

Feminism eh? The problematic nature of the male gaze is once again on the agenda here. But although the patriarchy does take its lumps, the exhibition is also infused with a strong sense of fun, and easily as much celebration as confrontation.

Pat’s creator, Dunedin artist Kiri Mitchell has pieces in another streetfront window, with unadorned mannequins that are just a tad more lifelike than the superslim figures to be encountered in stores nationwide.

And she has a jolly line in figures suggestive of classic Grecian statues. With perhaps a little more back fat.

Then you’ve got Michele Beefors’ fake fur Marilyns, taken from the famed uplifted skirt scene from Marilyn Monroe’s film The Seven Year Itch.

They’re far from itchy, of course. There’s no sign saying “don’t touch’’ but there’s no sign saying “do touch’’ either, and much as galleries like to protect their pieces, exhibition visitors have been finding it hard to keep their hands off these Marilyns.

Which by all accounts is something the actress herself found to be true.

(One young girl, seeing one of these from behind, pronounced her delight at the big fluffy chicken, then, walking around it, added: “Oh – it’s a lady!’’)

Sarah Bird’s piece The Protest has clay miniatures making dozens of very big statements.

Not that it’s all jocular. Check out the toxic target marketing messaging called out by embroidery artist Kylie Norton and – much as we might think of embroidery as a very homely undertaking – you’ll find that there’s nothing too homespun about not only the overtly unhealthy likes of model Kate Moss’s “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’’ quote (which, for the record, Moss now regrets saying).

You might also notice one of the models has strangulation marks on her throat.

The commonplace phrase “if these walls could talk’’ seems apt for Maggie Covell’s wallpaper work which, vibrant as it appears, is a multilayered piece that contains hidden words taken from women’s accounts of domestic violence.

Anna Muirhead’s watercolour series shows the traumatic circumstances of giving birth in China – a woman alone, having developed deep-vein thrombosis, needing an emergency C-section.

Tamara Nicholson’s video installation invokes indoor exercise and moments when people are literally stuck at home, oftentimes exercising to develop bodies that might one day be deemed fit to take outside.