The principal meaning of the word ‘snatch’ is that of a hasty catch or grasp or a sudden grab or snap at something. ‘Snatch’ also stands for something delicious, like a snack, or a scrumptious bite of food. In modern slang ‘snatch’ is often used for the female pudenda.* In the artwork SNATCH I intend to play, in an oblique sense with the word in both of the above comtexts by writing the work in a mish-mash of barbed wire and burglar proofing spikes on a background of electric fencing. The work emulates the Tantalus myth. Tantalus, the son of Jupiter, divulged heavenly secrets and for his punishment, was placed in Hades, forever to see nearby food and drink which drew back whenever he attempted to reach out and touch (to snatch) it, so that his hunger and thirst remained eternally unsatisfied.

 

The artwork SNATCH plays on the mind of burglaries and housebreaks where desperate characters without any apparent conscience plunder, maim and rape. It implies the allure of fabulous peacemeals of wealth and sex protected by challenging defences of burglar proofing and electric fencing. It pathetically proposes the desperate breaching of these obstuctive defences set up by a vulnerable society who appear to be at the mercy of a prevailing social construct.

 

* All references obtained from the Oxford English Dictionary

 

 

zatch The female organ of sex and childbirth, also the act of copulation. R. Dentry in Encounter at Kharmel (1971) says that bagpipe music is so awful, it is “enough to make the harlot of Jerusalem snatch her zatch.”