One artist has brought this most aesthetic object back into favour with her lyrical and Ironic sculptural meditations. Her works have included irons as bedroom slippers, sexy mules, iconoclasts and the human crash ‑cupie dolls burning in hell. Anne‑Marie Sirois has gained a lot of attention in her native New Brunswick, and is certainly worth a look here, if only to iron out any residual feminist beef with the iron.
SkidMore, «Iron Maiden», Hour, Montréal, semaine du 12 au 16 avril 1999
You might say Anne‑Marie Sirois has an iron will when it comes to creating her own objet d''art.
Steven Kelly, «Pressed into service. Moncton artist transforms kitchen irons into art», The Times-Transcript, 23 janvier 1997.
For the past three years Sirois has been creating sculptures that use, as their starting point, the common clothes iron. By adding objects to the handle, or arraying dolls behind a glass covered base to create a scene, Sirois has produced an entire collection of artistic irons.
Some are sublime like the birth‑of‑Christ cathedral window, some are actually useful and a few, like the divorce present with its cupie dolls roasting in hell, have been assailed as sacrilegious.
Bob Hick, «Ironic Obsession. Anne-Marie Sirois can't stop turning household irons into art», Telegraph Journal, 19 septembre 1998
That said, this is definitely a show to go and Sirois has presented over 30 small sculptures, all made from irons. Her work is very funny, with many asides to famous predecessors.
Meret Oppenheim's fur cup, for instance, has its counterpart in Fifi the Hot Dog, a poodle iron made from a mink collar. The Punk features an iron clad in black leather, chains, a nail ''collar,'' and a vibrant yellow mohawk.
Ferdevarius is an amalgain of an iron and a violin, while Clock features a working timepiece and a manic‑seeming red ''cuckoo.'' The best of these works display a broad humour and a playful sense of kitsch and culture.
Ray Conin, «Humour has place in art of 20th century», The Daily Gleaner, 19 septembre 1998
The artists show us that this everyday object can be witty, satirical. frightening, powerful, beautiful and much, much more.
Sirois works directly with irons themselves, building assemblages which transform the irons into a wild and wacky series of objects, useful, decorative or just plain amusing. She has had a great deal of fun doing this imaginative process and she transmits that fun to the viewer in spades.
Vivienne Anderson, «Household tool becomes theme for art. Ironing out a few wrinkles», The Daily Gleaner, 12 septembre 1998
Les transformations qu'Anne-Marie Sirois fait subir à ses fers sont aussi multiples (une vingtaine d'objets) qu'amusantes. Dotée d'une imagination fertile et sans prétention aucune, cette artiste nous propose, à travers ces assemblages, un monde tout à la fois insolite, poétique et ludique, empreint d'humour. Ces objets surréalisants, semblant procéder d''une rencontre fortuite de matériaux aussi hétéroclites que le fer et la fourrure, le satin, le cuir, le bois, la vitre, l'aluminium, étonnent toujours.
«A la Galerie Colline. Les objets en fer d'Anne-Marie Sirois», Le Madawaska, 12 février 1997
