My dress outlived my marriage

The Herald Sun, 14 July, 2008

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The rocky landscape of shattered relationships is artist Janice Gobey's hunting ground.

With a mix of paintings, installation and text, Gobey tries to find the points when marriages begin their descent into disaster -- which still befalls about half the 100,000 Australian couples who tie the knot each year.

The fairytale dresses and accessories of the $5 billion wedding industry are set against pieces of handwritten text depicting the harrowing stories of failure, mostly gathered from the artist's friends and contacts.

I'm interested in the rose-coloured spectacles and when the cracks start to appear and what it is that sends you over the edge,' Gobey, 44, says.

'People said they'd send me their stories, but when it came to write them they often found it too hard.

'So I interviewed them instead. I really had to psych myself up for it mentally. It was quite harrowing and confronting.

'I needed a stiff drink after doing three in a week,' she says.

There are about 20 such stories in the exhibition and she's hoping that eventually she will have enough material for a book.

She is inviting people to submit their stories on her website.

The most common themes, she says, are infidelity, boredom and uncertainty.

She says people often go so far down the track of planning a blockbuster wedding that they feel they can't back out.

'People often think the wedding will make it all right. One woman found out her husband was gay and he'd thought getting married would make him straight,' she says.

Gobey's ideas came from examining the demise of her own marriage. Originally from South Africa she married young and, after two children and a career in human resources and recruiting, she and her partner drifted apart.

Since their divorce she hasn't had another long-term relationship.

'When people see a room full of wedding dresses, they run a mile,' she jokes

. Gobey, who has a degree in psychology, has spent months collecting used wedding dresses from eBay, op shops and the Salvation Army, often baffling shop assistants by not even trying them on.

'We spend so much time on this event,' she says, 'on this one moment when you're the princess and the star. You wear the dress for an afternoon and some people spend as much as $14,000 on them.

'It's such a big industry and so much money goes into it, then people don't have enough money to buy a house,' she says.

'It's funny, too, that women -- including myself -- have divorced the man in our lives, but we still have the dress lurking in a cupboard or box somewhere.

'We are somehow loath to give it away or throw it away. It's easier to rid ourselves of the man than the dress.'

see: Til Death Do Us Part, Works by Janice Gobey, Trocadero Art Space, Level 1/119 Hopkins St, Footscray, until July 26, ph: 9687 6110 or visit www.trocaderoartspace.com.au