The sexual dimension figures ambiguously in Hayward’s works – often only subtly, then more pronounced – when enormous phalluses dominate in the sculptures, and finally explicitly in a work that has been titled "Sublimator". The object is a sort of lab machine that thrives from the addition of pulsating energies which are ultimately "processed" after being transformed under a transparent skin. It is a subtle metaphor for Freud’s concept of sublimation according to which the intellectual sublimation of sexual drives is the basic requirement of all art and culture. It also reminds us in a very metaphorical sense that not everything brought forth by the human mind in cultural achievements will be able to leave behind the carnal realm. And perhaps it does not just literally mean that push comes to shove at the beginning but also at the end.
Even with all their irony and also humor, Julie Hayward’s sculptures do not just boil down to a shallow illustration of psychoanalytic, biotechnical, media theoretical discourses. They are open enough to create links with still unconscious manifestations of reality. They might be sensors for the future, as Walter Benjamin once noted in connection with his theses on the artwork: "To make mankind familiar with certain images before the ends for which the same images are being made have entered into consciousness."


cited from
Coming Home or: Arriving on Foreign Shores
Andreas Höll
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