Decoywoman
Anna Falcini

Anna Falcini presents ‘Decoywoman’, a body of work that investigates the remains of Decoy Pond, a post-medieval earthwork used to lure and trap wildfowl on Halstow Marshes, in North Kent. Dating back to approximately 1697, and close to Decoy Fleet, the diamond shape pond is the only surviving decoy pond in Kent.

Event details

  • 11 July 2022 - 12 August 2022

    10:00-17:00 (GMT)

    UCA Rochester, ME1 1DZ

Decoywoman

In character as ‘Decoywoman’, Falcini reimagines the traditional role of the decoy man who maintained and managed the decoy pond. This curious reworking of the decoy man emerges as a figure that is entrapped in this landscape, a part autobiographical reference to Falcini’s on going relationship to the Hoo Peninsula and her deep attachment to it.1

As Falcini sheds the moult of the Decoy man, she turns her attention to the question of her entanglement in this landscape drawing a parallel to the physical materials of the decoy pond (nets, traps etc.). Simultaneously, she reads about psychoanalyst, D.W. Winnicotts’ 1955 study of a seven-year-old boy who displays a preoccupation with string triggered by temporary separations from his mother. As the young boy’s mother is hospitalised for her depression, he begins to tie household objects together with string later using rope to suspend him from the garden tree. Winnicott’s conclusions point to the exaggerated use of string belonging to “a sense of insecurity… or the idea of a lack of communication” (Winnicott: 2006, 13). String, he states, “joins” and holds “unintegrated material” (ibid.).2

[1] Carpenter, E., Halstow Marshes Decoy Pond (English Heritage, 2014)
[2] Winnicott, D.W., Playing and Reality (Routledge, 2006)

Exhibition open Monday - Friday 10:00-17:00
By appointment at weekends