"Here the photograph ceases to function as evidence of a past moment and instead becomes an active present-tense event unfolding before the viewer".
Karen Mayo
Karen
mayo
Between Image & Space
Take a Piece of Me
about the installation Changing Spaces
This artwork was part of a multi-site public installation collectively named Changing Spaces. These combined works were part of the Geelong After Dark program in 2015 https://geelongafterdark.squarespace.com/programme. This was an immersive installation that examined the relationship between female identity, representation and the female form in contemporary visual culture.
Presented across multiple spaces throughout the gallery, the installation invited viewers into a sequence of encounters that explored acts of looking, surveillance, participation and possession. Visitors first encountered a large-scale video projection (Objectify) visible from the street (images above), before moving through the gallery and becoming both observers and the observed. From the outside, passers-by could peer up through illuminated windows and glimpse visitors to the gallery moving through the space above, creating an unsettling tension between public and private viewing.
At the top of the stairway, left of the outside projection, and central to the installation, a large-scale photographic image of a female torso was displayed (Take a Piece of Me) on the wall as they entered the gallery above. Below this large-format print was a table of a hundred small printed reproductions of the same image. Visitors were invited to take a print free of charge as they stepped from the stairs into the gallery space. Through this simple gesture, the work extended beyond photographic representation and into physical interaction. The act of taking one of these images becomes part of the installation and artwork itself, transforming viewers into active participants, consciously or not and within a process of fragmentation, distribution and transforming the female form into an object of desire and consumption.
In the final iteration of the installation, visitors entered a private room within the gallery, and here they are immersed in an medative experiencial photographic artwork. This work was called "Changing Spaces" and the name sake for the show. Made from over 250 stitched photographic images, this artwork speaks of dissolution. The body is beginning to disappear. The translucent fabric obscures identity, the figure is fragmented through layering and movement, and the photograph exists in an ambiguous state between presence and absence. The viewer cannot fully resolve the body. We see traces, fragments and transitions moving in and out to transform the female form into abstraction.
"The spaces inbetween the images are the work " and that statement becomes even more profound when we consider the artwork is no longer located within any individual photograph. It exists in the transitions, the dissolves, the temporal intervals and the perceptual space between frames. This changes the conceptual emphasis from objectification alone to something much richer:
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the instability of representation,
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the fluidity of identity,
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the body's resistance to a fixed definition,
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and the transformation of photography from object into experience.
This work anticipated many contemporary conversations around expanded photography that have become increasingly prominent since the time this work was shown, and moving into the last decade.
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The work begins with photography.
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But it doesn't remain photography.
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The still images become raw material for a temporal experience.
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The photograph ceases to function as evidence of a past moment and instead becomes an active present-tense event unfolding before the viewer.
The journey through the gallery:
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The viewer encounters the projected face visible from the street.
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They become aware of observation and surveillance.
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They move upstairs and encounter Take a Part of Me.
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They physically participate in an act of taking and possessing an image.
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They then enter a private room where the body dissolves into movement and abstraction.
Through photography, video and audience participation, the work examined the shifting boundaries between image and experience, inviting viewers to reflect on their own role within systems of looking and representation.