ABSTRACT
Matter, materiality and materialisation are crucial terms in any project which explores aesthetics, difference and the articulation of alterity. As a process of materialization however, matter negotiates the chasm between subject and object reinstating knowledge as a performative activity which takes place between 'knower' and 'known'. Materialisations is one such micro-historical intervention into the matter of words and the corporeality of theory. The significance of matter and materialisations to a feminist critical project centred on women's art and female subjectivity is reiterated by a brief foray into etymology. The epistemological hierarchies between woman and man have powerful linguistic and aesthetic ramifications, situating theory over practice in the same way that word/text dominates image/object and form precedes matter. Theory loses pre-eminence as an all-powerful and singular tool able to yield fixed truths, but gains by acknowledging difference and moving beyond subject/object dualism toward becoming a practice.
