Francesca Heinz employs humour to interrogate aesthetic ideals represented in art history. Her recent images incorporate horse’s heads juxtaposed with appropriations of well-known paintings, such as Arrangement in Grey and Black no 1 (1871) (colloquially known as Whistler’s Mother). Her sculptural works, also referencing horse-parts, are life-sized, odd and a little grotesque – they undermine their traditionally noble subjects and engage viewers at a visceral level, generating varying degrees of discomfort, all the while encouraging the viewer to objectify the strange horse-human hybrids rendered within folds of cloth, latex and flesh.

For this artist, sculpture is not ‘trophy’, and painting is not ‘beauty’ in a traditional sense. Rather it is an opportunity to explore the absurdities that exist within artistic tradition. Heinz’s The Mother in Law (2015) is both a remake of James McNeill Whistler’s renowned painting as well as an acknowledgement of Joanna Hiffernan, a fellow artist of Whistler, his model, muse and lover. In her own right, she was a remarkable artist and an independent woman, remaining relatively unknown due to her gender and Whistler’s fame. It
is here that Heinz ‘steps in’ for the known or unknown women of these paintings and sculptures.