Things My Mother Never Told Me takes its title from the book by Blake Morrison. Based on the memoirs of his mother, a practicing doctor during the Second World War and through to the 1960’s in England, Morrison’s mother witnesses the birth of a thalidomide disabled child who, before anyone could raise a question, is whisked off by the obstetrician in charge to an adjoining room to be killed by a lethal injection.
Following the series entitled, DAMAGED - thalidomide victims in medical documents, Mangos is interested in removing individuals from the undignified, specimen-like representation seen in medical photography and placing them into entirely different contexts. No longer depicted as freaks, curiosities, or objects of contempt, individuals are placed in quotidian settings. All of the images are based on actual persons who, despite their severe thalidomide or other congenital deformities, have reached adulthood and lead relatively normal lives. The works have art historical references particularly because deformed persons have typically been represented and perceived of as monsters, objects of contempt or in more recent times, criminals. It is for this reason that she deliberately chose to work in the tradition of oil on canvas as well as address questions related to beauty, difference and “normality”.
As adults with completely normal desires and aspirations, the subjects do not look for sympathy but take charge of their own lives – regardless of whether they emerge as successful, mediocre, talented or unremarkable.
Some of the images were loaned to Mangos by The Thalidomide Trust in the UK, where she was given access to the archives (incidentally as the first person ever outside of the Trust). With the agreement of individuals depicted, she was given copies of photographs and these form the basis for some of the works in the show. Subsequently she also had contact with the persons involved and some were generous enough to share their experiences with her.
Mangos decided to paint large oil “portraits” as she wanted the work to have a monumentality and weight not easily dismissed.
Mangos’ recent series DAMAGED, thalidomide victims in medical documents, currently on show at the AGNSW is an installation comprised of oil paintings based on medical photography. The photography is mostly from the 1960’s and 70’s. One of the most interesting aspects of the photography is that despite its attempt at objectivity, it inevitably betrays a less than desirable (and or abusive) attitude towards the subject. Children and young women as subjects oscillate somewhere between the criminal and or beast in their medical representation. Mangos is looking for the person in all of this - the individual who has to live out their life with a permanent medical injury or deformity, due to no fault of their own and for no logical reason, from birth on. In re-contextualizing the images within the tradition of oil painting on canvas, she not only attempts to draw attention to these facts, but also bring a new light to how deformed individuals are perceived, represented and understood.
