Therapies: new photography by Christine Webster
9 May – 3 June 2014
Gallery One – Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland
In conjunction with Milford Galleries, Dunedin and the Auckland Festival of Photography
Saturday 31 May, 1pm: Visual culture expert Dr Sandy Callister is in conversation with photographer Christine Webster about her images of the crone in Therapies.
Christine Webster’s photography gets under the skin with its unsettling beauty and unnerving, direct gaze at subjects usually left in the dark. For over 35 years, her work has examined the way in which the female body has been constructed historically. In Therapies, she re-imagines the age of the crone, barren in body and pushed to the outskirts of a society that worships youth and beauty. In these recent photographs made in England, she has produced a sequence of images which evoke powerlessness, anguish and desolate beauty.
With tacit acknowledgement of the traditions of the English Romantic landscape, Webster sets her figures in a bleak world of bare trees, chill earth and oppressive skies. She writes: “Therapies places the subjects in, and alongside, a landscape which is not fecund and burgeoning with ampleness, but instead scarce, bleak and pared back to the essential dirt and mud”.
Christine Webster’s photographs, with their uneasy subject matter and lush production qualities, confront the viewer with their striking juxtapositions. Rich, textured interiors and stark, monochromatic exteriors mirror the tensions inherent in the minds and bodies of her subjects. The complex narratives in the 57 photographs which make up Therapies invite considered contemplation.
Gus Fisher Gallery
The Kenneth Myers Centre
74 Shortland St
Auckland, New Zealand
Telephone: +64 9 923 6646
http://www.facebook.com/gusfishergallery
Gallery Hours
Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm
Saturday 12pm-4pm
Closed public holidays
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