Female Readymade (Pollock's shed, photos of Janet Sobel, Letter from Mark Rothko, keys, wire cutters, Blow Up detail of Pollock painting and of Sobel painting, chain, smoking gun, p.218 of 'American Type Painting', gestures)

In this work, Melissa Gordon refers to the pioneering artist Janet Sobel, who used the drip technique before Jackson Pollock made it famous. Despite her obvious influence on Pollock, art critic Clement Greenberg called Sobel a "primitive painter" and a "housewife" in an article in Partisan Review.

The 1955 article in question can be seen in the bottom left, as a painted reproduction. The handgun next to it can be interpreted as a "smoking gun", a piece of damning evidence. Two screen print photographs show two details from paintings: one by Sobel from 1944 on the left and one by Pollock from 1948 on the right, revealing the tell-tale similarity. In the centre of the work is a reproduction of a letter from artist Mark Rothko to Sobel, asking her for biographical information for a group exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century (1944), where Greenberg and Pollock first laid eyes on Sobel's work. The title p.218 of 'American Type Painting' alludes to the exact page where Greenberg acknowledges and immediately downplays Sobel's influence on Pollock. The photographs at the top show Sobel in her living room, which was also her studio. The painted chains, keys and wire cutters – tools associated with access and appropriation – represent the gathering of evidence. The "painting within the painting" in the top right corner symbolises reappropriation, or the reclamation of Sobel's rightful place in art history.

In the series Female Readymades, Melissa Gordon explores how gestures from female artists have often been commandeered or completely ignored in art history. Through a reinterpretation of Marcel Duchamp's readymades, she questions the creation of historical narratives and who gets recognition.