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| STYLE: Photography |
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In film and photography, Christine Webster stages works of fiction that seek to uncover the underlying truths of the human condition and question morality imposed by society. Focusing on issues such as gender, sexuality, identity and fantasy, Webster uses confronting imagery in her artwork to challenge accepted societal ideologies.
Graduating with a diploma in photography from Massey University in 1981, early in her career Webster investigated issues of balance of power between genders. In her 1987 series, New Myths, male and female nudes set against dramatic black backgrounds were combined with text to create highly symbolic works refuting traditional representations of women in art and their roles in society.
In 1994 Webster’s exhibition Black Carnival toured New Zealand, showing at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Wellington City Gallery, Waikato Museum of Art and History and the Govett Brewster Art Gallery, and in subsequent years travelling to Queensland, Barcelona and Aberdeen. Featuring a solid 60 lineal metres of life-sized figures that stretched uninterrupted, around the walls of the exhibition rooms, it was a confronting spectacle of sexuality. Set within lush backdrops of deep black or crimson velvet and using props and costumes reminiscent of a 1930’s travelling circus, the sexuality is overt yet the sexual orientation is either ambiguous or against social norms. Once the viewer is surrounded by these life-size figures, who hold a direct and challenging gaze with their audience, the scorn usually placed on such people is transferred to the viewer, prompting them to question social conventions.
In her more recent photographic series, le Dossier (2006), staged in a dilapidated chateau in Toulouse, France, three figures pose provocatively amidst the decay. Reference to a scandal is splashed across newspaper headlines, which lie splayed across the chateau floor. The series interrogates the line between eroticism and pornography with images of women in confronting poses. Viewer becomes voyeur as they take in scenes of frontal nudity in unsettling surrounds. Far from the vacuous expressions of fashion and exotic models, the psychological state of the figures is manifest in pose and expression. Vulnerability, uncertainty, passivity, pain, strength can be read in the series of images.
Her moving image work, Blindfield, moves away from gender issues but still questions society, this time using mental illness as a platform to confront the manner in which communities dispose of people considered outside of the norm. It is a foreboding investigation of the nature of the mental institution and its inhabitants. “The patients we see in Blindfield are arguably docile; they are watched by us and their role is a helpless one, becoming dis-abled by a loss of identity; their clothing, personal objects, even names have been removed. The idle and useless acts they undertake – hoovering, sitting, combing another’s hair – fill time but do not fulfil them. They do not seem to be cures.” (Laura Earley)
Her most recent work, ViGil (2008) is a multi-screen video and sound installation presenting a number of seated nudes. This work explores issues around desire and vulnerability, intimacy and control, examining differing perceptions about sexuality. A collection of subjects of differing sexual orientations occupy eleven monitors. The nudes are strangely distanced, playing the role of observers.
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| Past Exhibitions |
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| Four Photographers |
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| Works on Paper |
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| Publications |
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