(TWTENIS Introduction
Theory and Practice:
Rewriting the Text: Prc±>lems and Strat^ies Image and Text: the Artwork
The areas discussed in this dissertation will hopefully place the work in a critical context within contemporary art issues.
JANE ADAM
Post Graduate Dissertation
DTTROXICnON
'ENJOY BEING A GIRL' Mvertisement for Hilton underwear coordinates [Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend, 1/11/86] The picture tells the story....
Meaningful imge/narrative construction.
A slender figure of a wcrnan, lying on her overcoat wearing nothing but Hilton underwear and stilleto shoes, rests her head under an Aston Martin in the process of mechanical repair, tools by her side. Travelling alone?
-[potentially a man ccncealed behind the bonnet] - desolate comtry road - the ultimate seduction - for
Reality and Visual Representation
Two points of reference are important in interpreting the image: one of perception and cultural experience; the other, the relationship between reality and its visual representation.
Semiotics, a theory v^ch looks at the process of the production of meaning: it bases analysis on the way meaning is constructed - signs within image that register the image as meaningful in an ideological sense.
Classical painting and photography rely on imagery that reinforces notions of reality. The photo-image offers a reality effect, representing notions of
'truth'.
A semiotic reading of this advertisement gives an exanple of ways to analyse and deconstruct the power of the image, representation, sexual difference and audience reception.
The advertisanent presents an image with the intention to sell the product [Hilton underwear], presumably to a female customer.
The image conveys [if alone] notions of the 80's liberated woman, independent [obviously wealthy], and her freedom [car/travelling, countryside].. Luxury car, [an Aston Martin denotes wealth]: aiming the product at a particular class, or desirable to those vdio cannot afford.
Image and Text. Enjoy [being] a girl.
The statement stands without doi±)t - gender role specified. The contradiction is obvious, with notions of 'girls can look after themselves', the advert-isement has been constructed under the male gaze: displayed underwear [sexual activity]; headless body, the pose, the unreality, the 'to-be-looked-at-ness'. [Mulvey, 1975].
This reinforces phallocentric representations of vraman as sex object/sexual availability. But of the female spectator? Narcissistic damage?
[Coward, 1984].
The photographic medium becomes the desired medium.
Post Graduate Dissertation
I was introduced to theorectical analysis through film and media studies while still at art school, vrtiich offered critical discussion about 'looking' at art
[as an active rather than passive experience] .
Photography and film theory brought to question the politics of picturing, and modes of representaticn through a dominant ideology.
This was my introduction to an investigation of the representation and construction of female sexuality in society, focussing mainly on film theory influenced by semiotics/structuralism, psychoanalysis and feminism.
THEORY AND PRACTICE
The relationship between art practice and art theory is always a contentious issue and a cause for debate within art practices.
In art schools and institutions, there has been vicious antagonism towards theoretical discourse, with vehement discussion about the relevance which theory has to art: a scepticism still prevails. [Anti-intellectualism of the 60's formed these attitudes]. Which brings us to question how theory enables us to appreciate art.
Anti-theory oppositicxi foregrounds bourgeois noticns of the artist as genius, and the n^rth of self-expression: these are somehow positioned outside of culture.
'The fact that art remains embedded in the language of ideas [and not simply the language of visiai] compels any reading of art to account for its ideological position in ccnjunction with its aesthetic dimension.' [Sangster, Close Remarks, 1985]
Janet Wolff [The Social Producticn of Art, 1981] outlines the move away from the idea of artist-as-creator, as social and ideological factors are involved in producing the work: that audiences play an active/participatory role in creating the finished product.
'The artist/cultural producer is confronted with certain materials with vSiich to work - existing aesthetic codes and conventions, techniques and tools of producticxi - and is, moreover, himself or herself formed in ideology and in social context.'
[Wolff, p94, 1981]
A relationship between viewer, the work being looked at, and the world, needs to be established. Theory helps as a way of seeing how representation comp-lements or contradicts a spectator's perceptions of the world.
'...the debates about political content, or radical form, or subversion of codes, all centre co the qxjestioi of audiences. It is a question of v^ch technique of cultural interventicxi will, sonehow, affect audiences, and it also is a question of v^o those audiences are.'
[Wolff, p91, 1981]
Post Graduate Dissertation
Art functicxis both as a representaticml practice, ma]d.ng pictures of things, and as a process of making representations to its audience.
Ctovdcusly, an historical overview of events/debates leading up to recent theoretical debate, would put these issues into perspective [lacdc of space prevents me doing so] yet n^ main intention here is to draw attention to current theoretical art practice.
There has been a proliferation of specialist journals dealing with the range of theoretical issues in art and culture:
. art/popular culture [Art and Text, Tensicxi];
. various conferences [Sydney Biennale Fora, Futurfall, Syd Uni, 1984]; . foninist publicaticxis on questions of cultural politics and analysis
[Camera Obscura, Faninist Review];
. political journals v^ich analyse cultural foritis in relaticai to political intervention [Left Review];
. film journals [Screen, Framework];
. fashion and rock magazines [Follow Me, Ihe Face].
This convergence of ideas from people involved in different media has circ-ulated interest and debate amongst many practising artists, and is reflected in investigaticxis towards a more theoretical practice.
The work is not meant to express nor interpret a particular theory, but to broaden the analysis in and through a re-repesentaticsi in visual imagery.
It is at this juncture that the term 'post-modernism' has brought much
interest in the visual arts. [Follow Me gives an A-Z of post-modernism, 1986]
What is the post-modem?
In reply Lyotard states:
'The post-modem would be that vrfiich in the modem poses the unpresentable in the presentation itself; that vrtiich refuses the consolation of good form or of the consensus of taste v^ich would allow some ooninon nostalgia for the impossible; that which is concemed with new representations, not purely for the pleasure of it, but the better to insist that the
unpresentable exists.' [Lyotard, plO, ZX, 1984]
It is a very difficult term, almost impossible to define. Many interpret it as a theoretical term for 'appropriation'. I often hear art students flippantly call thanselves post-modemists if they are deriving images from other sources. It is a fashionable disposition, no less the difference between an affinity and an analytical interpretaticxi.
Of all the discussion on post-modernism, the significance of popular culture has been sadly neglected and as Nowell-Smith points out:
'....if there is a link between a crisis of artistic forms anJ a wider socio-ideological crisis, this link must be sought in the world of meanings and representations that circulate widely.
Pc®t Graduate Dissertation
And if there has been a significant semiotic shift in the past 20 years, it is popular cultiiral representations which hold the key - particularly in view of the fact that one of the few things that have ocntestably taten place in these years has been the erosion of "high" culture ty popular culture.' [Nowell-Smith, p206, 1986]
Post-modernism is in^ortant to discuss in terms of Australian visual artists and its impact on cultural practice. Australian art practice has undoubtedly been highly influenced by intematiOTial styles. This 'New Theory' offers ways towards an independent visicxi for Australian artists, to locate their practice in history [not to negate it].
'Ihe best that one could expect fran such an encounter is to see Australian artists successfully working out the means to a unique critical visicxi, to ways of seeing here.' [Bronfield, pi4, 1986]
Post Graduate Dissertaticxi
REWRITING THE TEXT: Problems and Strategies.
Craig Owens regards post-modernism as a crisis in Western representatioi, announced by marginal and repressed discourses.
'...to expose that system of power that authorises certain represent-aticHis, vrtiile blocking, prohibiting or invalidating others. Among those prohibited fron Western representations, whose representaticxis are denied all legitimacy, are wanen. Excluded fron representation by its very structure, they return within it as a figure for a representation of -the unrepresentable [Nature, Truth, -the Sublime etc.].'
[Owens, p59, 1983]
Owens proposes that post-modernism may be another 'masculine inventiai', to once again exclude women. Writings on post-modem culture have failed to address the issue of sexual difference, therefore rendering wcmen as absent within dcminant culture, [the same argument surrounds Neo-Expressionism, an affirmation of virility - masculine and aggressive.]
'Whatever it is that post-modernism is, must be addressed by faninists, for woman's place in history and historical change is now firmly on the theoretical agenda, and debates about such issues are no longer being run in theoretical indifference to gender roles.'
[Ewington, 1985]
Owens points out that one of the most significant developments in the past decade is the anergence of a feminist art practice, a post-modem faninist practice that questicxis theory, that deccnstructs femininity: investigating vrfiat representation does to wonen. [Owens,p.71]
Post-modem critique of representation < — > Faninist critique of patriarchy.
A significant amount of vrork has explored the problenatics of sexuality, meaning and language: one could go on forever discussing the different theoretical positions in the cultural field.
There have been numerous debates around visual pleasure, and representations of wonen: woman as 'object of the gaze', or more appropriately, woman as c^ject of speculatioi. [ Ferran, 1986]
The look was first theorised in film theory, most notably 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinana', an article by Laura Mulvey analysing images of women and their construction in screen narrative: the way film reflects a 'socially established interpretatioi of sexual difference vrtiich controls images, erotic ways of looking and spectacle', utilising psychoanalysis to dancxistrate the way 'the unconscious of society has structured film form'. [Mulvey, 1975]
The female as object of the male gaze has cone under scrutiny with questions about the female spectator, for this is vtet Mulvey neglects to talk about as the woman who does the looking, looks as a man.
Post Graduate Dissertation
Anne Ferran proposes a speculative investigaticxi of vroman, suggesting woman as 'object of speculation' rather than 'c±)ject of the gaze', v^ch she regards as 'archaic meaning', invested in the male subject. Speculation iinplies a double meaning: conjecture - pushing ideas around, and uncertainty because it is not caught up in search for an ultimate truth, especially vAien investigating an
'over-determined category of wonan'. [Ferran, 1986]
Therefore, to consider woman as represented, and as a viewing subject.
'The three basic looks of the cinema - the look of the camera at the scene, the look of the spectator at the film, the look at the characters at each other - carry the spectator through a series of masculine and feminine points of view.' [Weinstock, 1985]
Recent film theory has had a strong influence on the visual arts, [see the exhibiticxi catalogue for Difference, NY, 1985], as it focusses cm the spectator [voyeiirism] as central In the process of cinana significatioi; how the cinana constructs meanings around 'woman', and how doninant cinara addresses spectators as gendered subjects. [Kuhn, 1982]
Film is an incredibly seductive and powerful medium: representations by the projected surface of an image that appears more real than reality itself, a blatantly fabricated world vAiich hold reality in place. Film theory's focus on identification formation is derived from feminist/psychoanalytic analysis, devoted primarily to formaticxis of pleasure in looking, and how the
mirror/image is perceived, and its relation to sexual identity/difference.
'Film, photograghy, and television all offer forms of entertainment and ccmunication based cxi the circulation of visual images, on the sale of images and the meanings conveyed by them.' [Cbward, p75, 1984]
Technological developments culminating in mass reproduction of visual images led to Western 'consumerist' culture's dsssession with looking at still and moving pictures.
Barbara Kruger, an American artist nrfio utilises deconstructive technique to subvert images: a photomixitage using image and text in graphic format, and derived from styles in advertising and billboards, tlie purpose is to deconstruct power relations of visual representation and identity. Using appropriated imagery, framing devices [cropping] and text are used to destabilise the power of the image.
Kruger exploits and reproduces media images with text/slogans - 'YOU' the audience are the captive, as the object of the Look - 'YOU' and 'I' as accus-ation and judged - you are the spectator and the image, thus unsettling a normal identification to the image.
'Your gaze can hit the side of her face, but if she moves her head in order to return your look, she stops breathing; she turns to stone.'
[Weinstock, 1983]
Kruger's manipulation of text and image disrupts social dogma, 'truth' and the power of the gaze.
Post Graduate Dissertaticffi
Feminism and Psychoanalysis.
'Psychoanalysis offers a specific account of sexual difference, but its value [and also its difficulty] for faninism lies in the place assigned to woman in that differentiation.' [Rose, p33, 1985]
Feminism and psychanalysis are both concerned with sexual difference and how it is ccjnstituted: the relaticaiship between sexuality and the biological masculine and feminine, the family, and power relations between the sexes.
Psychoanalysis was exploited by feminist art practice to enable us to articulate hew meanings are ocxistituted [unccaiscious processes] for viewing subjects - vtet we see and how we see. It was the stressing in psychoanalysis on the social construction of the individual that attracted feminist analysis.
French analyst, Jacques Lacan, in his re-reading of Freud, was a central focus,'because it could account for the cultural production of sexual
difference without recourse to a pre-given, 'natural' or essential concepticn of fanininity...' [Ran)dji, 1985 ].
Lacan suggests that a crucial moment in the subject formaticxi is established by relations of looking. The 'mirror stage' - the primary reflected gaze - is that moment vAiich situates the agency of the ego, well before any social determination, in a line of fictioi vfaLch is forever irreducible for the individual alone - discovering a unified sense of self [misrecogniticn].
'... feminists in the mid-70' s began to examine ways in v^ch sexual difference was already inscribed in the ideological systems of
representation and discourse, in ways which inevitably sabotaged their attempts to provide a positive re-evaluatioi of wcmen's cultural role.' [RanMn, pi 4, 1985]
One such critic vAo began to question theory was British artist, Mary Kelly. Her Post-Partum Document [1976-80], utilised various representational msdes [literary, scioitific, psychoanalytic, etc]. This artwork represents a critique of Lacanian psychoanalysis based on autobiographical documentation of mother/scxi relationship - child's relaticaiship to the mother, documenting the child's entry into the 'symbolic order' and the mother's loss, 'as she relinquishes her child to that order of culture which already holds the limiting definitirais of than both.' [Rankin, pi7, 1985]
Kelly's work is definitely not anti-theory, in fact some would say it was too theoretical, limited only to a specific audience. The Document has an important place in feminist art practice, it interrogates mythic formulaUons of psychoanalysis, as well as addressing modes of representation and
establishing that there is no one possible answer to all aspects of human experience. Theories are not universal truths, and as Kelly herself has stated:
'There is no single theoretical discourse vAiich is going to offer an explanation for all forms of social relations, or for every mode of political pracUce.' [Kelly, 1982]
Post Graduate Dissertaticxi
SCENES THE DEATH OF NATURE
'It ought to be acknowledged that the work does derive fron theoretical concerns, particularly debates from the history of feminism. But I am not interested in trying to depict anything that oould be said to be truth about fonininity. I am concerned with the representation of notices of femininity as they are arranged in systems such as religious iconography, mythology and classical aesthetics. This series is sctnevAat at odds with the traditiOTial cppositional methods of a lot of feminist work. One doesn't want to negate other feminist practices, certainly. And it is a worry that ny wark might be interpreted as opposing oppositicral work. That is, as merely conservative, vrfiich is vtet could haj^n if the ironies and ambiguities haven't been worked out sufficiently.'
[Anne Ferran, discussion with Ross Gibsai, catalogue, 1986].
CXJNDUCTING BODIES
'This work is a si±)jective investigation of sane of the ways in v^ch fanininity is socially constructed, and an att«npt to rupture and dismantle its representations. The work does not coistitute a search for 'the feminine' in v ^ t ranains essentially a phallocentric culture [colonised and colonising]. Rather it proposes a disrupticn of the authority of that culture and the codes v^ch spe^ on its behalf. In this subsequent space, the action and desire of the female author can become pre-eminent.'
[Merilyn Fairskye, unpublished statement, 1986].
The above quotes are statements made by Sydney - based artists, Ferran [photography] and Fairskye [painting]. Both these artists are concerned with
debates an fanale sexuality and representaticjn, and individually produce a
different set of discourses to position and construct meaning.
Theorising the Look, concerning female desire, is a highly problematic area for practising artists. There is a constant state of reassessment ard certain indifference to theories on the category of 'wonan'.
•••••• t 'itr
Post Graduate Dissertation
IMAGE AND TE3CT: The Artwork.
I consider the work I produce is part of an art practice vAich critically confronts dctninant cultural, social and political 'scenarios'.
Ihe work attanpts to explore the relationship between representatiai, pcwer ai*3 identity, ly deconstructing familiar narratives.
The images function as a visual analogy for the deccnstructive text. A
juxtaposition of text and image, vrfiich already have certain specific functiois in their original contexts, forces new narrative patterns to enierge fran them.
The viewer is meant to work at reading the image and questicxi the 'frame of reference'.
The Print Medium.
Printma)d.ng is seen as sotething of a 'lesser' artform; hardly a nenticsi in the hierarchical categories of the art world.
For the screenprint there are obvious ccxinections to a history of poster maMng [eg.political posters] and reference also to the pop art of the 60's, and to pc^jular culture.
Graphic devices, [framing, placement of text] have been utilised in this series of print work. The screenprints are presented in a fragmented series, yet all the work interrelates and is meant to work as a cross - secticn of ideas oi seductive images and pleasure.
Hie imagery is drawn from film and televisirai stills and holiday snapshots, with the female subject as the primary speculatory investigation within narrative constructicns.
Post Graduate Dissertation
WORK PROGRAMME 1986/7.
Discussion with lecturers MARCH about work proposal.
Artforum*: Ross Gibson, 'Camera Natura', film about representation of the Australian lansdcape, as portrayed in the myths, maps, paintings, writing, photography and the cinana of v^ite Australians.
Cotnpleted series of monoprints/screenprints APRIL - film stills.
Group exhibition. Lake Maoquarie Gallery, 'Selection 7' - seven Newcastle artists. Film still series were exhibited.
Artforum: Anne Ferran,iiiotograE4ier, 'Carnal Knowledge' - discussed debates on sexual difference/representation and theoretical art practice in Sydney.
Research on wcxnen and representatioi. MAY Attended conference organised by
Humanities Research Centre, ANU.
'Feminist Criticism and Cultural Production'.
Sydney Biennale: exhibiticMis and forums.
Discussions with Jeff Gibson about his work, [primarily screenprints] exhibited at exhibited at Union Street Gallery, Sydney.
Chris Prater workshop.
A.C.P. Sydney, exhibiticn by four photographers JUNE concerned with fanale desire/representation/
landscape - 'Pentimento'.
Technical preparation for 'Fascination' print.
Completed 'Fascinaticxi' print. JULY
Technical prepsiration for 'Framed ly History', screenprint.
Critical discussicn with lecturers in relation to the 'Framed by History' print.
Post Graduate Dissertaticn
Attencaing art theory subject: 'Sexuality and Representaticxi',
study and research for art theory course.
Technical preparation for 'Picturing the Subject'.
Discussicxi with Marie McMahon about my vrork.
Artforum: Toni Robertson, 'Political Postering'.
AUGUST
Printmaking excursion: Edram Lodge - South Cbast,
CCTitinue theoretical research and discussion with other students.
Artforum: Griselda Pollock,
'Difference: Sexuality and Representatioi [recent noves in faninist art]'.
SEPTEMBER
Critical session with lecturers.
Reworked film still prints with text.
Conpleted 'Framed ty History' print.
OCTOBER
Oonpleted two 'Untitled' screenprints.
Artforum: Brian Langer, curator.
'European Vision' - Australian Video Festival, video screenings.
NOVEMBER
Completed 'Picturing the Subject' print.
Technical preparation of screens.
DECEMBER
Oonpleted 'Ambivalence' screenprint.
New series of film still images ccnpleted.
Super 8 film shoot related to work and film stills taken.
JAN./FEB.1987
Post Graduate Dissertation
Meeting at Artspace with invited artists, to exhibit print/grapiiic work.
Exhibition opens March 25.
Gcripletion of written sutrdssioi.
Framing of all artwork.
Installing artworks in gallery.
• The Artforum progranme was part of my wark progamme for 1986. The guest lecturers listed, related closely to my work and were of particular importance to me.
REFERENCES
INTRODUCTION Mulvey, L.
Coward, R.
'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', Screen, Vol. 16, No. 3, Autumn, 1975.
'The Look' Female Desire Women's Sexuality Granada Publishing Ltd., 1984
THEORY AND PRACTICE Sangster, G.
Wolff, J.
Lyotard, J.F.
• 'Close Remarks - Placing Art and Theory' On the Beach, No. 9, 1985
• 'Aesthetic Autonomy and Cultural Practice' The Social Production of Art
The Macmillan Press, London, 1981 • 'Reply to the Question
What is the Post-Modern?'
Translated by Meaghan Morris and Ross Gibson ZXA Magazine of the Visual Arts
Winter, 1984
Nowell-Smith, G.- 'Lost Reflections' Book Reviews
(includes a review of Post Modern Culture, ed. Hal Forster) Framework,
No. 30/31. 1986.
Bromfield, D. - 'The Pleasure of the Gaze' Art Network, No. 18 Summer/Autumn 1986
REWRITING THE TEXT; Problems and Strategies Owens, C.
Ewington, J.
Weinstock, J.
'The Discourse of Others: Feminism and Postmodernism'
Post Modern Culture. Photobooks (Bristol) 1985 Ltd.
First published as The Anti-Aesthetic by Bay Press, 1983
150 Victorian Women Artists catalogue essay. August 1985
•Sexual Difference and the Moving Image' catalogue essay for Difference exhibition. New York, 1985
Barbara Kruger: We Won't Play Nature to Your Culture
Kuhn, A. - Women's Pictures,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1982 Coward, R. - 'The Look' Female Desire - Women's Sexuality
Today
Granada Publishing Ltd. 1984 Rose, J. - 'Sexuality in the Field of Vision'.
Catalogue essay for Difference exhibition. New York. 1985 Rankin, A. 'Difference and Deference'
-Theorising the Representation of Sexuality at the New Museum, N.Y. Art Network No. 16. Winter 1985.
Kelly, M. - As quoted by Craig Owens in 'The Discourse of Others'
Jane Adam
STUDY PROPOSAL
GRADUATE DIPLOMA - PRINTMAKING Research and Production Outline for 1986
Four areas of production with associated research and visual strategies are proposed. Each area deals, through the printed image, with representations of film media as still and moving imagery.
"Image, movement, still" Abstract
A recent film titled "A Song of Ceylon" by Laleen Jayamanne has centred on debate on movements within and about the film still. Using the body, gesture and pose held still within the process of moving film, a desired effect has been of "the arrangement of bodies held for so long as to render the body ecstatic, to empty it." (L.J).
Furthermore, it seems that to hold an image still against the momentum of montage has the effect of releasing movements within the frame, along with other discordant tensions between forms in an almost paradoxical, contained ecstasy.
Another idea, from Barthes, is that in holding the
mise-en-scene, a shift in the centre of gravity occurs so that it becomes "the element 'inside the shot'". One of Jayamanne's purposes was to arrange mise-en-scenes of gestures which would surrender to this gravity.
To consider the filmic image or persona, body, face, gesture, in this way is to re-emphasise the technical codes of film. That is, to emphasise the specifity of the technical image as bringing about a metaphorical shift in the construction of the body - from object behind the filmic treatment to its location closer to the techniscal surface, where all elements ( the filmed and the filming process) occupy a foreground which de-emphasises the urge to compare a likeness off-screen with that of on-screen.
Three considerations' emerge from the above set of ideas: 1. The construction of screen persona.
2. Movement within the film still.
Visual Devices
- parody of gestures, framing, mise-en-scene.
- visual extentions of specific fetishims incorporated in the above, eg, accentuations of lines of tension set up by gesture.
- the play of 2 and 3 dimensionality, e.g. using the cut-out (2-D) for accentuation , a foregrounding device...
- inclusion/exclusion of elements in frame, to play with movement between and definition of spaces in and out of frame.
"Image, women, screen"
Abstract
2. "Following the course of Benjamin's objects in 'the age of mechanical reproduction', we are introduced to the sound and image montages that carry the amorous scenes immediately -abolition of the courting ritual. The fragmented narratives, so readily attainable, bring with them the decline of the aura of love. If there is recourse to the private sphere, it appears as a playing out of the game which the environment of technology organises.
As in Barthes' figures of A Lover's Discourse, their
constitution is 'without any order, for on each occassion they depend on an (internal or external accident)'. Like the way one is schizophrenically flung from one contradictory schema on love, to another, following the chain of Pop - 'they stir, collide, subside, return, vanish'. Or, with the high rotation pattern of disc playing, the point of entry (tuning in) may be like landing on the roulette wheel."
Kim Raschepkin
excerpt from In Time In Vitro Love Third Degree No. 2
The above quote refers to the fragmentation of the notion of love projected through screen and audio spaces. A similar idea of the formation of femininity, or the female persona, can be formulated with such assertion of the abundance, contradictory, fragmented etc; or "emptied" narratives or micro views on the media subject.
Work dealing with this idea could, broadly, attempt a detailing (bringing to the fore) of the nuances found within screen narratives which 'document' the habits, gestures, responses of the female persona.
And, to highlight the fascination, obscurity, absurdity of the specificity of mise-en-scene of women's lives.
Visual Devices
- enlargement of parts of a given image.
- juxtaposition eg; of contradictions.
- image/text disjunctures.
"Image, narrative, analysis"
Abstract
3. " — they (film stills) are subscribed to the context of the cinema: they might be still and two-dimensional like painting but they also exist to be about movement and to be about to move both within the frame and through a plotline."
Ross Gibson
excerpt from Rushes catalogue, an exhibition of film stills -Union St; Gallery, Pyrmont. 1985.
Films stills immediately invoke an involvement towards a narrative construction, an ultimate truth. A reality that is pre-existant in the spectator's mind is construed through a dominant ideology, a patriarchal one.
"the structure of representation - point-of-view and frame - is intimately imlicated in the reproduction of ideology (the
'frame of mind' of our 'points-of-view')."
Victor Burgin
Thinking Photography, p. 146.
Visual Devices
- displacement of meaning, deconstruction through montage. - colour/the painterly gesture.
- video (popular media technology), recontructing a scene
"Image, metaphor, sign"
Abstract
4. "... to use a filmic analogy, we might say that the individual photograph becomes the point of origin of a series of psychic
Victor Burgin
Thinking Photography, p.212.
To position the audience to search for the hidden text, to question the ideology of the subject, that the reading of the image is depended on the history of the subject.
Identification, association and memory, whatever significant elements the subject recognises in the image are inescapably derived from 'elsewhere'.
LIST OF ARTWORK
1. FASCINATION 1986 Screenprint (Edition 10)
2. AMBIVALENCE 1986 Screenprint (Edition 10)
3. FILM STILL WITH LANDSCAPE (SCENE OBSTRUCTS SCENE) (DETAIL) 1986
Screenprint Artist's Proof
4. FRAMED BY HISTORY 1986 Screenprint
(Edition 10)
5. PICTURING THE SUBJECT 1986 Screenprint
(Edition 10)
6. UNTITLED, 1986 Screenprint (Edition 6)
7. UNTITLED 1986 Screenprint (Edition 6)
8. SEDUCED AND ABANDONED 1986 Monoprint/Sceenprint
9. DESIRE 1986
Monoprint/Screenprint
10. PASSIVE REFLECTION 1986 Monoprint/Screenprint
11. SILENCE 1986
Monoprint/Screenprint
12. ESTHER ON THE EDGE OF FRAME 1986 Monoprint/Screenprint
13. FILM STILL - YOUR TENDENCY TO DRAMATISE AND YOUR RIDICULOUS ROMANTICISM ''
Monoprint/Screenprint
14. FILM STILL - HE THINKS HE KNOWS LIFE. 1987. Monoprint/Screenprint
15. FILM STILL - SHE'S NOT A GIRL LIKE THE OTHERS. 1987 Monoprint/Screenprint
16. FILM STILL - NO LONGER BODIES, BUT PURE ASCETIC IMAGES. 1987
