Past exhibitions -- 2004

The Line Between Us

The maternal relation in contemporary photography

Exhibition dates: 1 September - 23 October 2004
Opening Function: Saturday 4 September, 3.30 - 5.30 pm
Artist and curators talks:
2.45pm Saturday 4 September Donna Bailey, Anne Ferran, Polixeni Papapetrou and Anne Noble, in conversation with Kyla McFarlane
1.15pm Thursday 23 September Kyla McFarlane

Guest Curator: Kyla McFarlane

Featuring the work of Donna Bailey, Pat Brassington, Anne Ferran, Anne Noble and Polixeni Papapetrou

Anne Noble Ruby's Room #23 2000-2002 courtesy of the artist, Bartley Nees Gallery, Wellington

The Line Between Us brings together five leading women photographers from Australia and New Zealand and explores relationships of intimacy and distance between photographer and subject, via the theme of the maternal relation. The exhibition is curated by Kyla McFarlane, a freelance writer and curator with a particular interest in photography, who has published widely on the visual arts in Australia and New Zealand.

"The photographs featured in the exhibition engage with the strong emotional connections and painful separations that are part of this complex relationship. While several depict the playful performances of the child, others are infused with darker narratives of absence and loss,"McFarlane says.

The images depict intimate family relationships alongside photographs in which the idea of the maternal haunts the space of the photograph in more oblique, but equally powerful, ways. Such diverse narratives are linked by the body, which is figured as the central site of these connections.

The work featured in The Line Between Us is also bound by a sense that the photograph is a scene of representation in which certain relationships are played out, or performed. These scenes are often directly influenced by the presence of the mother/photographer behind the lens.

In their explorations of the maternal relation, several of these artists engage directly with photography's complex history, and the role of women within that history. They also connect with feminist issues such as psychoanalytical notions of the maternal relation. In their depiction of young subjects and intimate relationships, many of the works also engage with emotive discussions surrounding photography such as censorship and debates over the way children might be represented. Despite their different approaches to these issues, all five artists reveal the photographic space of the maternal as a shifting, contested realm.

The Line Between Us has been developed from themes explored in Kyla McFarlane's PhD thesis, which she recently submitted in the School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, Faculty of Arts, Monash University.

Where:
Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA)
Ground Floor, Building 55
Monash University
Clayton Campus (Mel map 575)
Tel: 61 3 9905 4217
Email: muma@adm.monash.edu.au

Artist and Curators talks:

• 2.45pm Saturday 4 September - Donna Bailey, Anne Ferran, Polixeni Papapetrou and Anne Noble, in conversation with Kyla McFarlane
• 1.15pm Thursday 23 September - Kyla McFarlane

Opening: Opening Function Saturday 4 September, 3.30-5.30pm

Opening Hours: Tuesday to Friday 10am-5pm, Saturday 2-5pm, Free Entry

Media Inquiries: Max Delany, Artistic Director +61 3 9905 1644 or Wendy West, +61 3 9905 1683

Artists

Donna Bailey's photographs featured in The Ideal and the Real at Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria in May-June this year. She has been a selected finalist in several photographic awards, including The CCP Leica Documentary Photography Award in 1999 and 2003. In 2000, her work was exhibited alongside internationally acclaimed photographers such as Nan Goldin and Larry Clark in Complicity, a group show held at the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney, as part of the Sydney Festival.

Pat Brassington is one of Australia's most respected photomedia artists. She has exhibited widely in group and solo shows in Australia and overseas. Her work is included in this year's Biennale of Sydney, Reason and Emotion. Work in Progress, a retrospective exhibition, was held at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne University, in 2002.

Anne Ferran's work is held in several major public collections in Australia. She has also held artist-in-residence positions in a variety of locations including Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris and the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. Ferran exhibits regularly in Melbourne at Sutton Gallery, where her most recent show, Any Body, was held in May.

Anne Noble is one of New Zealand's leading photographic artists. Her work was recently seen in Melbourne in Slow Release: Recent Photography in New Zealand at Heide Museum of Modern Art in 2002. A major survey show of her photographs, States of Grace, toured New Zealand in 2002-2003.

Polixeni Papapetrou's work featured in Photographica Australis, a major exhibition of Australian contemporary photography held in Madrid in 2002. Recent solo shows include Phantomwise at the Faculty Gallery, Monash University, Caulfield, and Mystical Places at Stills Gallery, Sydney. Her work is held in major public collections in Australia and in private collections in Australia and the United States.