Here, with a bang! is an exhibition of a video based performance that parodies the seductive burlesque balloon pop as a catalyst to explore how women engage with absurd and playful approaches to performing their bodies seductively. The work provokes constructed expectations of feminine sexual expression, offering a corporeal feminism that defies them.

The loud pops of the balloons break up and juxtapose the soft, overtly feminine dance with sounds that have violent undertones, further distancing the performance from an indulgence in pleasurable imagery.

Lauren McCartney is a multidisciplinary, feminist artist, who is based in Wollongong, New South Wales. Her work parodies objectification and conventions of appropriate female behaviour. She creates situations where her body is humorously exaggerated to the degree that she becomes a spectacle and an object of laughter, whilst simultaneously disrupting stereotypes and myths about femininity and misbehaviour. McCartney’s practice offers the concept that through failing with her materials and her body, she succeeds in creating her work.

McCartney holds a PhD (2018) through Curtin University and a Bachelor of Creative Arts (2010) (Honours Class I) from the University of Wollongong. Her work has been collected by the Art Gallery of Western Australia and she has exhibited her work and