Siri HAYES
born Australia 1977 courtesy of the artist Bozo/Sanja II 2008 from the series Transition chromogenic print 32.0 x 31.85 cm Diggidy/Dave I 2008 from the series Transition chromogenic print 32.0 x 31.85 cm Digit/Paul IV 2008 from the series Transition chromogenic print 32.0 x 31.85 cm Monty/Sally III 2008 from the series Transition chromogenic print 32.0 x 31.85 cm
MAKE UP: painted faces in contemporary photography For photographers interested in exploring the nature of personal identity, the painted face has become an important subject in recent art practice. This exhibition surveys a range of photographic projects that have used face-painting to examine conventions of photographic portraiture and explore its potential for developing new approaches to identity in the contemporary world. Traditionally, photographic portraiture has served a range of functions, many of which assume an essential relationship between photography and the identity of the sitter. For example, photography has often been used as a tool for stereotyping individuals. From biometric documentation of indigenous people and physiognomic studies of criminals, through to passport photographs and professional headshots, photographic portraiture has been used to establish, fix and caricature identity. On the other hand, photographic subjects have often enacted or manufactured identity specifically for the camera. Many nineteenthcentury sitters for studio portraits understood that their dress, pose and setting could establish impressions of class, status or gender. Having your portrait taken was highly fashionable, and the photographic portrait could engender aspirations of social mobility. This imaginative approach to posing for the camera has continued to the current day. That is, there has always existed an aspect of role-play in photographic portraiture.
MONASH GALLERY OF ART 860 Ferntree Gully Rd Wheelers Hill Victoria 3150 T: +61 3 8544 0500 E: mga@monash.vic.gov.au W: www.mga.org.au Tues to Fri: 10am–5pm, Sat & Sun 12–5pm closed: Mondays and public holidays
The difference between the two polarities suggested here could be thought of in terms of who controls the image: the sitter or the photographer. But the meaning of any portrait is also a product of conventions and contexts that the subject and photographer cannot fully control or anticipate. In this respect the face of portraiture is always contested territory, and the ephemeral and fluid quality of make-up is a particularly useful trope for exploring this notion. As many of the portraits in this exhibition demonstrate, contemporary identity is not the immutable essence of an individual, but nor is it something that can simply be enacted at will. Instead, identity is constantly being negotiated and contested at the inter-face between the subject and the social.
MaKe UP
painted faces in contemporary photography
Eric Bridgeman Bindi Cole Ray Cook Sandy Edwards Siri Hayes Owen Leong Darren Sylvester Nat Thomas & Concettina Inserra Christian Thompson Justene Williams 4 May–30 June 2013