Exhibition dates: Wed 6 - Sun 17 Jan 2021
Space 1
The face behind the face
Su Yang
My studio projects aim to investigate the ideologies that encourage many young Chinese women to undergo unnecessary even harmful non-therapeutic cosmetic surgeries to alter their appearance in order to conform to dominant standards of “female beauty ideals.” Cosmetic surgery has been a controversial topic among feminist debates. One group believes it is a way for women to transcend and/or transform female embodiment. However, I want to pose the question about the identity of the women who do not have any of their personal features after cosmetic surgeries and instead take on the same features as internet celebrities. These works present the visible impulse to these invisible ideologies that have begun to change women’s bodies. They are also conceived with the desensitized nature of cosmetic surgery and the subsequent traumas.
Support by City of Yarra
Space 2
Take A Warm Coat, Babe
Liz O'Brien
Take A Warm Coat, Babe is an exhibition of photographic works by Liz O'Brien exploring an experience of intense longing to close an impassable distance within a relationship and the unavoidable acceptance of change and separation. Be it literal distance between lovers separated by travel, or the emotional distance between friends grown apart, O'Brien utilises the processes of film and pinhole and film photography to present intimate and quiet reflections on her conceptual concerns in Take A Warm Coat, Babe.
Liz O'Brien is an interdisciplinary visual artist working in analogue photography, studio drawing and mixed media practices. Having focused on photography throughout her tertiary education, O'Brien has grounded her practice in the use of expired film types, pinhole photography, alchemy, and the incorporation of textiles and salvaged materials. Through amalgamating traditional and contemporary photographic processes, O'Brien's conceptual concerns regarding locational influences on identity, aspects of distance within relationships and experiences of separation are presented in an intimate, reflective manner.
