Julie Rrap’s practice is largely concerned with the representation of the female form, and she uses her own body to explore and perform her ideas. ‘Horse’s tale’ (1999) represents this aspect of her practice. It juxtaposes the artist’s backside with the tail of a horse and forms part of her series Porous bodies, which was first shown at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney in 1999. For this exhibition, the 11 large-scale photographs that make up this series were displayed with corresponding video works.

Produced in the aftermath of Rrap’s father’s passing, Porous bodies centres around themes that relate to the body, such as life, death, eroticism and decay. The series was inspired by the porosity of the skin, and Rrap used that as a starting point to explore the body as a permeable, fluid and changing vessel that absorbs and emits, always interacting with the rest of the world. The surreal, playful and at times disturbing images from within the series reference the body in a variety of ways while creating surprising associations. The unexpected juxtaposition in this work is accompanied by a playful title, which accentuates the humorous aspect of the image and highlights the role humour plays more broadly throughout Rrap’s practice. The work also highlights Rrap’s use of her own body, and more particularly isolated parts of it, to challenge, defy and play with pre-existing expectations of the representation of the female form.

(2021)