Showing posts with label sexuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexuality. Show all posts
Monday, 16 November 2020
Friday, 16 February 2018
Q&A with The Naked Artist - Suzie Pindar
16/02/18
Q&A with The Naked Artist - Suzie Pindar
on the occasion of 3x3: An exhibition of nine women photographers
New Art Projects, London
11 January - 4 March 2018
Anna McNay: What are the key concerns or themes running through your
practice?
The Naked Artist – Suzie Pindar: I guess my personal
key themes are just that: they run from how I feel inside myself into my
practice, so to speak.
AMc: How much a part of your work does self-portraiture form?
TNA-SP: 90% is self-portraiture
AMc: As a woman looking at a woman (herself – but perhaps also other
women, if you also make portraits of others), how aware are you of the
conventions and load of the male gaze? To what extent do you work with or
subvert these?
TNA-SP: I have never worked with anyone else, nor do I ever
think of the male gaze.
AMc: How – if at all – does your sexuality influence or shape your work,
especially your self-portraits?
TNA-SP: Sometimes my sexuality can influence my work, but
more so a few years ago when I was still accepting myself.
AMc: As a woman who likes women, looking at women, do you feel your gaze
is different from the gaze of a heterosexual woman artist? In what way?
TNA-SP: No idea. I don’t think about it, if I am honest. I
just make my work for myself.
AMc: Can you say something about the work you are submitting for this
exhibition? How are you seeking to portray yourself? What are the key aspects
you’re drawing forth? Physical, psychological, sociological…?
TNA-SP: My work is about sharing how I am feeling, or was
feeling back then in 2015. At that time, I had depression, so my work was about
portraying The Naked Artist and trying to find ways to make myself feel better.
AMc: Do you seek to portray yourself as object, subject, or both? How
does this dynamic come through in your work?
TNA-SP: I feel like I am a subject within my work, an
extension to my practice.
AMc: Do you work in media other than photography? If so, how does the
gaze offered by the camera differ from the viewpoint obtained through other
media? If you don’t work with other media, what is it about the gaze of the
camera that attracts you to working with photography?
TNA-SP: Sometimes, depending how I feel. It doesn’t change,
it is still personal and focal to myself.
AMc: What one work of art, depicting a woman as object – or subject,
have you been most influenced/impressed by and what is it about this work that
captures you?
TNA-SP: I am not influenced by other artists, however, if I was
to say I was impressed by a fellow female photographer, it would be Loredana
Denicola.
Image:
The Naked Artist - Suzie Pindar
Naked
2015
Also published here
Monday, 24 April 2017
Review of Queer British Art 1861-1967 at Tate Britain
24/04/17
Queer British Art 1861-1967
Tate Britain, London
5 April – 1 October 2017
5 April – 1 October 2017
“For
me, to use the word ‘queer’ is a liberation; it was a word that frightened me,
but no longer” – Derek Jarman
In a year when nearly all of
London’s – nay, Britain’s – major (and even lesser) museums and galleries are
putting on LGBTQI* related
exhibitions to mark the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of
sex between men in 1967, Tate Britain’s Queer British Art 1861-1967 is the
biggest and boldest of the lot. What could have – and was being feared by many
would – become an androcentric, homoerotic romp, is a well-curated,
historically informative and aesthetically compelling exploration of the
multifaceted interpretations of “queerness” in the century leading up to this
milestone.
The self-declared remit of the
exhibition’s curators is to explore “a wide range of sexualities and gender
identities” – hence the choice of the word “queer”, rather than any combination
of letters and asterisks, also influenced by the fact that, with ever-changing
labels, many of those that we use today would not have been used, or
recognised, by the artists and audiences in their own times. The starting point
of the show – 1861 – was selected because it was the year the death penalty for
sodomy was abolished (although it was still punishable by imprisonment) and the
decades are traversed chronologically, thematically, and through the
representation of artistic groups, such as the pre-Raphaelites and – synonymous
with fluid sexuality – the Bloomsbury Group.
Read the full review here
Sunday, 5 March 2017
Tuesday, 14 June 2016
Review of Bhupen Khakhar: You Can’t Please All at Tate Modern
Bhupen Khakhar: You Can’t Please
All
Tate Modern
1 June – 6 November 2016
From a distance, the paintings in
this exhibition look like large-scale Indian miniatures, with their vibrant
palette and simplified, flat, illustrative characters. Look more closely,
however, and there are floating figures that could be from Marc Chagall,
foliage that looks like something from Henri Rousseau,
elements of pop art, and then, uniting it all, a devotional style that could be
straight out of 14th-century Sienese painting. This stylistic symphony is
punctuated by a wry humour and narrates contemporary scenes – often multiple scenes per work – of Indian life: the life
of ordinary workers and tradesmen; of the artist and his older, male lovers;
and of the degeneration of his body as he fights, and ultimately loses, his
battle against prostate cancer. Comprising 91 works from across five decades,
this is the first international retrospective of the work of Bhupen Khakhar
(1934-2003) since his death and, according to incoming Tate Modern director
Frances Morris, it is “part of the spirit of the bigger international story
that the new Tate Modern [to be opened to the public on 17 June after its £260m
extension] is dedicated to”.
This political aspect is drawing
the exhibition both praise (for widening the version of art history shown to
the British public) and criticism (for being no more than just a politically
correct gesture and disregarding the quality – or lack of quality – of the
work), and it is true that, with paintings quite this steeped in narrative, the
average visitor to the gallery might find him- or herself struggling to
identify without some prompting as to the sociocultural references at hand.
That said, there is much that can be drawn from the works with just the basic
information provided in the wall texts and, moreover, need one necessarily always
comprehend every last dot and dash in order to enjoy something for its aesthetic
merits? This is perhaps the biggest misconception of people who worry about
going to a gallery because they “don’t know enough” – and it is a shame,
because it is only through looking (and then perhaps reading a little
background or context afterwards), that one learns anything at all. I would
thus urge would-be visitors not to be put off by a lack of familiarity with
Indian culture or history, regardless of what some critics say.
Read the rest of this review here
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