Suffragette Slasher

digital video, 3 minutes, 2008

Suffragette Slasher is an experimental video about Mary

Richardson, a suffragette who grew up on the shores of Lake

Ontario in the small town of Belleville in the early twentieth

century.  She is notable for one particular action that she

carried out in London on March 10, 1914.  

As a member of the militant British suffrage group, the

Women’s Social and Political Union, she carried out an act of

violence to protest public indifference to the imprisonment of

one of her leaders, Eveline Pankhurst.  Richardson concealed

an axe in her purse, entered the National Gallery, waited until

the guards were not looking, and then slashed Velasquez’s

Rockeby Venus several times before she was stopped.

For this piece, I re-enacted this protest action, slashing

a large copy of the Venus that I had obtained online.

I then edited the footage I'd shot with many tiny cuts, every five

frames to be exact. For about two minutes, viewers see the

sustained action of Richardson (performed by me) preparing

herself to carry out this action by getting dressed. Interrupting

this activity however, every five frames, are shots of

Richardson at the museum carrying out the slashing action.

The effect is one of increased tension throughout, it feels like a

strobe light spotlights this activity and at times the images

appear to overlap.

Funded by the New York State Council on the Arts

and the Tonawandas' Council on the Arts/Carnegie Art Center.