BETHAN MOONEY - LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX, BABY

Aussie visual artist Bethan Mooney talks about her life and work and Bits and Bods: a web series for girls and gender diverse teens she created with Isabella Connelley to talk about sex, bodies and all the awkward bits in between.

BETHAN, WHAT AND WHERE DID YOU STUDY?

I have a Bachelor of Photography from RMIT University in Melbourne and have just obtained c diploma in Directing Commercials from the National Film and Television School in London.

TODAY YOU ARE A PHOTOGRAPHER AND FILMMAKER. FINE ART? COMMERCIAL? OR BOTH?

Both. They are constantly influencing each other. I try and bring fine art into all commercial work and my commercial projects have taught me to think about my audience in fine art projects. For me, it is all about creating images that are evocative and have emotional value whether commercial or otherwise.

SEEING THE COLORS YOU USE, YOUR WORK SEEMS PICTURE PREFECT FOR PLASTIK. NEVER THOUGHT OF DOING SOMETHING DARK AND MOODY OR EVEN BLACK AND WHITE?

I love creating images that are highly stylized, humorous and colorful and so approaching every project with an unrestricted palette of color is important for me. That is not to say I do not want to shoot in black and white. It all depends if the image has what it takes to be rendered in black-and-white, and the sensations and feelings I want to evoke in the viewer. At present I am drawn to our weird and wonderful bodies (not the ‘perfect’ bodies that promote unreasonable beauty standards) and their magnificence is best revealed in color.

HOW IMPORTANT IS HUMOR TO YOU?

It is everything. On one level, it keeps me interested, engaged, and loving what I do. On another level, it is instrumental to the emotional value of my images. Humor can often have a unifying effect. It can form a social bond, through the identification of experience and shared beliefs, and most importantly, it can break down barriers and encourage conversation, about often-perceived taboo topics.

Feelings of insecurity, confusion and weirdness were at their height for me during puberty.

WHO IS ISABELLA CONNELLEY? TELL US A BIT ABOUT HER.

Isabella and I met at RMIT in Melbourne. We instantly bonded over our weird and wacky ideas and started collaborating. Isabella lives in Melbourne and continues to thrive in photography and film. Unfortunately, the ten thousand miles that separate us at the moment hinder us working together, but we are great friends and life-long, creative collaborators.

IT IS WITH HER THAT YOU DO ONE OF YOUR MORE RECENT PROJECTS BITS AND BODS. TELL US A BIT MORE ABOUT THE PROJECT …

Bits and Bods is a web series for teen girls and gender diverse teens to help them get comfy talking about sex, bodies and all the awkward bits in between.

Isabella and I started the project as a photography series in our last year of university and quickly realized that this was a HUGE topic that sparked a lot of interest and desperately needed to be discussed. Since then the team has expanded to include a bunch of young women working in various media and public health, all with one thing in common - woeful experiences of sex education.

We felt the best way to talk about sex, puberty and teenagedom was to do just that, talk about it! So we brought together a group of young women and gender diverse folk to share the advice they wish they'd had as teens and create a documentary film series. We have pulled the 65 hours of footage we filmed with them into 20 short, themed episodes. Their stories are honest, sometimes hilarious, and tackle the serious stuff that teenagers can face too.

These stories will be intertwined with fantastical imagery to create an inclusive sex ed resource that is as entertaining as it is diverse - normalizing conversations about periods, pubes, boobs, bodies, gender, sexuality and all other normally-taboo topics.

WHY IN THESE DAYS OF INTERNET AND SEEMINGLY OPEN ACCESS TO ALL, DO WE NEED A DIFFERENT KIND OF APPROACH TO SEX/ SEX EDUCATION?

While the internet offers free range for curious young minds, not all information on the internet was created equal. Accessible, accurate and inclusive information is actually still really hard to find and often, silence on these topics leads teens to turn to male-gaze mainstream porn for education. We are using the internet to offer a more accessible (and engaging) sex ed option: inclusive and accurate sex ed from real people who have just gone through puberty. Unlike other forms of sex education, we do not just provide facts and figures. We normalize the process of talking about sex, because research shows that talking about these things leads to safer sex, and happier and healthier teens.

It is also a chance to take sex education beyond the often stagnant and sterile world of the school classroom. Social media is a great place to start breaking down stigma and taboos, encouraging open conversations about sex and bodies. So we like to think of the web series as a kind of giving young people some power and agency, to decide when and how they learn about sex and ask all the awkward questions they really want to ask.

CAN YOU TELL US A BIT MORE ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH SEX EDUCATION …

Feelings of insecurity, confusion and weirdness were at their height for me during puberty. It was a time of embarrassment and isolation and I felt unable to ask the questions I wanted answered to my parents, teachers and even friends. I did not know females could masturbate, I thought I urinated out of my vagina, I constantly lived in fear of being called a prude or a slut.

Basically, I would like to have known way more than simply being able to point out a fallopian tube on a diagram!

IN WHAT STAGE IS THE PROJECT?

We are currently in the post production phase of the web series. We have the first batch of episodes coming out in the first half of this year and we are looking to get a few more funders on board to help out with the remaining episodes. So stay tuned folks and get in touch by following us on instagram @bitsbods!

WHAT OTHER PROJECTS ARE YOU WORKING ON?

I have some exciting commercial projects in the works, including a powerful film about breast cancer awareness. Real people, real stories, the sort of stuff that keeps me loving my job!

WHAT OTHER ARTISTS/ PHOTOGRAPHERS YOU CONSIDER AN INSPIRATION?

Grayson Perry, Jenny Saville, Viviane Sassen, Lynne Ramsay, Kim Gehrig - the list goes on and on...

WHAT IS ONE EXHIBITION IN 2018 THAT REALLY BLEW YOU AWAY?

Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up at the V&A in London. I swear the world seemed a lot more colorful when I left that exhibition.

WHAT YOU HOPE 2019 WILL BRING?

Hopefully my first narrative short film, travel and countless trips to the cinema.

GUILTY PLEASURE?

Pleasure should not be guilty! But if I had to pick something, squeezing spots - Dr Pimple Popper is my all time favorite Instagram.

Interviewed by Peter Speetjens