Bento Box

Full description

Background: This work contributes to the field of Design and Sexual Health Innovation (http://dashi.rmitidsites.net.au/). The author is the key global practitioner in this area. She promotes the innovation of products and services that tackle the taboo nature of sexuality and sexual practice encompassing medical fields to the sex toy industry. This work, especially developed for this exhibition explores less commercially driven outcomes and proposes a ritualistic practice of sexual pleasure equating slow food with slow sex. The work is based on Betony Vernon’s philosophies of sexual practice that involve Ritual intention- that ritual makes us more focused and the consumption of sex or food becomes a slower more deliberate act.

Contribution: The exhibited work Bent-o Box is a collection of handcrafted ceramic and wood artefacts usually associated with food consumption contained within a Bento box. In amongst the artefacts is a handcrafted ceramic dildo. The intention is the acts of sexual practice, drinking and food consumption become fluid. The act of planning and using all the artefacts becomes ritualistic and considered. The use of materials such as ceramic and the reference to the Bento box allude to the Japanese history of tea ceremony, kabuki and bondage ritual which developed out of Kyoto centuries ago.

Significance: The author was invited to contribute this work to a major collection of Australian and International works exhibited in this show around the theme of Pleasure. It was the only specific piece from the Design field, all others being art, sculpture, photography, craft and multi-media. The author was invited to discuss the work and her career in both a podcast and an artist floor talk. The work progresses her views of sex toys as high quality designed artefacts that sit within design practice. The work opens up the scope of what sex toys could be.