My Retirement Tea Party
Domestic table setting: vintage linen and crockery with decals, fabric and paper circles, soundscape
Thanks to the demand placed on them for unpaid caring work, Australian women retire earlier — and with substantially less money than men. This is despite women living longer and therefore needing more income.
As a result of this, women develop mixed emotions about what retirement means to them. These facts, hopes and dreams are captured on the crockery and amplified in the soundscape. The central cake stand contains “macarons”, each representing two months wages cut from the accompanying fabric panel “A Woman’s Work is Never Done”.
The great myth is that financial resources from a working life create the solace of financial security in retirement. The embroidered panel reveals how much of that retirement solace is reduced by the months of unpaid labour women undertake in their working years.
“Feminism represents love, care and nurture. As a man, it leaves me feeling sad, disappointed and angry at the gaps.”
Design
Input for this design came from my experience of running workshops for women thinking about retirement. The facts I gathered to share with them were brutal. Yet there was no singular or simple response from participants to the question “what does retirement mean for me?”
I gathered the fragments of hopes and dreams, fears and doubts from the workshops and fed them back to a group of friends. Afterwards, I hosted a tea party to discuss about what they were excited and/or concerned about for their own retirement. The recording from that tea party is the basis of the soundscape for this piece.
The table setting sits in the centre of the space. A familiar domestic object catches people’s attention in an art space. Perhaps they even wonder “how is this art?” The subversive reveal of facts and fears are the reward for the curious, who must literally “lean in” to engage with the message.
Materials
The vintage glass cake stand, with its dome of “sweet rewards” is the centerpiece of the setting. It is surrounded by vintage crockery “embroidered” with the facts and fears of women’s retirement reality. Inside the glass dome is a pile of peach and white “macarons”. Each macaron is made from circles cut from the companion piece called “A Woman’s Work in Never Done”.
The linen tablecloth was made for me by a friend of my mother in the 1980s. Dorothy retired from a dedicated life as housewife and mother to a modest, secluded life as widow. During these years, she kept herself occupied with embroidery, like so many women of her era. The garland motif is reproduced on the crockery, and also on the fabric panel motifs of mothering, companioning, and caring in the piece “A Woman’s Work in Never Done”.