Two women (back view)2019
Artist statement: This work is rooted in my training as an artist in the 1960s and in a persistent interest in the activity of making photographs as both a cerebral and physical act.
I have long sought to extricate the naked female form from its sanctioned place in art history as an object of desire or aesthetic pleasure; to invest it with vigour and agency.
The women in these images are my peers, their bodies are like mine – they have already been captured by ‘art’ – indeed, any gesture the female body makes seems to have already been described and coded.
I’ve worked somewhat automatically, seeking to understand and conceptualise – through the act of making – a path towards representing these solid, weighty female forms in a new way.
2020 COLOUR FACTORY HONOURABLE MENTION
Gelatin silver prints are black-and-white photographic prints that have been created using papers coated with an emulsion of gelatin and light-sensitive silver salts. After the papers are briefly exposed to light (usually through a negative), a chemical developer renders the latent image as reduced silver, which is then fixed and washed. This technique was first introduced in the 1870s and is still used today. Most twentieth-century black-and-white photographs are gelatin silver prints. They are known for being highly detailed and sharply defined prints with a distinguishable smooth, even image surface.
