WHEN : 17th August – 15th September
WHERE : Queensland Centre of Photography
Meditating upon the landscape, scenes are constructed in collaboration with the subjects that provide the possibility for creating an intimate shared space that could be sexual. There is a tradition of depicting the female body in painting, with the land as a metaphor for mother and nature being seen as maternal. However here the scenes are not fecund and burgeoning with ampleness, but instead scarce, bleak and pared back to the essential dirt and mud.
In a search for psychic healing, subjects are memorialized through nature as they seek to embrace the spiritual and the sublime historically associated with romanticism. All of the women in ‘Therapies’ grapple with pain, emotional and/or physical; each has a journey underway that they have been prepared to share. Each has wanted to seek an internal sense of calm.
Images of partially clad or naked women may appear to be asking the viewer to take the role of voyeur. Film theorist Laura Mulvey explores how this type of complicit viewing is considered the norm where women become objects for anonymous viewing. The subjects, however, appear unaware of the camera and are involved in their own internal world or struggle. Identity is not always revealed and often the gaze is averted, and in this way, the women remain unseen.
Text Extract – QCP (2013)
Image – ‘Therapies’ by Christine Webster (2013)
