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Margaret Dodd (born 1 February 1941) is an Australian artist who works in and film/video. Her most well-known work is a series titled I am not a Car that included ceramic models of Australian cars as well as an Animation, first shown at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1977, and again in 2020.
Dodd attended Adelaide Teachers College and later the South Australian School of Art.
By 1964 she was married with children, living in the United States where her husband worked at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. At this time she read The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, and felt liberated by new concepts of women's roles.
When her husband transferred to a new job at the University of California, Davis, Dodd enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts program at the university. She studied art with Robert Arneson and became part of what became known as the "funk ceramics" movement. She graduated from the University of California in 1968.
In the 1970s Dodd became part of a loose movement of ceramicists in Adelaide who were embracing what might be called Funk art. She was also involved with the Women's Art Movement in Adelaide. (2026). 9781760462970, Australian National University Press. ISBN 9781760462970
In 1977 Dodd created the series titled I am not a Car that consisted of ceramic Holden sculptures dressed as babies, mothers and brides, created in studios at the JamFactory on Payneham Road.
By 1982 Dodd was already known for her Holden car ceramics. She then made the film I am not a Car to explore how men objectified women and viewed both women and cars as objects of desire. It has been described as a suburban horror story. A mother takes her children to a beach, and upon return is accosted by men at a petrol station. The film is full of strange imagery (the glance of a breast as a headlight). The film undermined the image of domestic life at that time. It was first screened in 1983. It was shown again in 2017 at the Ace Gallery, Lions' Art Centre, Adelaide. This exhibition included objects from her series Chosen Vessel (2008) and Holden Hypotheses (2014).
In 2008, Dodd presented Chosen Vessel -- Australia's own car in a new exhibition. The show still focused on Holden cars from 1940 - 1960. At the time of the exhibition, the artists was quoted as saying:
"They Holden are disappearing gradually and they become fossils," she says. "They gradually become more and more irrelevant to the next generation. There's no doubt that there is an element of nostalgia in the collection."On 20 October 2017 the Holden factory closed."People identify incredibly strongly with their car," she says. "You can live in it, you can wear it, you can drive it, it is your badge of who you are. But as these old cars disappear into the mists of history, they become classical objects, or fossils. Cars now all look pretty much the same. You have to actually look at the badge sometimes to work out what the car is."
Dodd has created other sculptures, but has continually returned to cars.
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