Click and myth approach
LINK:
http://www.smh.com.au/
http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/click-and-mythapproach/2007/04/12/1175971244440.html
"Maybe it's in the blood" ... a fascination with photography runs in Anne
Zahalka's family
Photo: Sahlan Haye
Jacqui Taffel
April 14, 2007
Page 1 of 4 | Single pagePage 1 of 4 | Single page
STANDING IN FRONT of The Sunbather #2, one of Anne Zahalka's
best-known creations, the viewer is taken for a ride. First stop is
recognition: the photograph is clearly a homage to Max Dupain's
iconic Sunbaker. Then amusement: the sleek, bronzed original in
black and white has been replaced in brilliant colour by a pale and
rather scrawny red-head. Then confusion: is this long-haired
substitute male or female? (On closer inspection, the hairy forearms
confirm it's a man.) Then there's appreciation for a striking image in
its own right - the blazing orange against the blue sky and white sand.
And, finally, thoughtfulness, as the contrast between the two portraits
sinks in. As celebrated representations of Australian life, which is
more truthful?
The instant appeal of her work that can then be unpacked, layer by
layer, her constant testing of imagery and the tension between reality
and fiction (the camera never lies - true or false?) have made Zahalka
one of Australia's most popular and respected photo media artists.
Her name is mentioned alongside Tracey Moffatt, Bill Henson,
Patricia Piccinini and Rosemary Laing and in a career spanning more
than two decades her reputation has spread, with her works, around
the world.
Unlike the artistic stereotype, in person she is modest, well-organised
and easy-going. A hoarder who collects 1950s kitchen canisters and
old postcards, Zahalka runs a bed and breakfast in her home and
turns 50 next month.
It's shaping up to be a big year. The Art Gallery of NSW is showing a
selection of her work and Melbourne's Centre for Contemporary
Photography has mounted her first career survey, covering 20 years
of portraits, with a show called Hall of Mirrors. In its 21-year existence
this is the centre's first comprehensive artist survey and the first time
its five exhibition spaces have been dedicated to one artist. Zahalka's
work will also appear this year in the inaugural exhibition of the new
Samstag Museum of Art in Adelaide and in a major retrospective of
Australian art in the Netherlands.
And, says the artist, excited in true Sydney style, "we've just finished
this great reno on our house". She shares the Newtown terrace - now
with sleek new kitchen - with her television producer husband, Ian
Collie, and their daughter, Alice, 9, whose texta version of Sidney
Nolan's Ned Kelly looks promising.
Zahalka's studio is tucked away at the top of the house in a tiny room
stuffed with boxes of negatives, rolls of prints, exhibition files, books,
packaging and serious computer hardware in controlled chaos.
Despite her artistic standing, it's tricky making a living out of it; the
B&B, started in 2000, helps pay the mortgage. She used to take
photographs of all her guests until it got too onerous. "But it was a
lovely record."
Downstairs, the art on the walls includes a trio of fish by Lin Onus and
a few of Zahalka's works, yet the house doesn't look conspicuously
"arty". Zahalka has never been the flashy type, preferring a more
subtle approach in her work, with a playful streak, an obsessive eye
for detail and a quiet but steely determination to get the picture she
wants.
For her most recent series, Wild Life, inspired by J.D.Salinger's
Catcher in the Rye and exhibited recently at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in
Paddington, Zahalka needed shots of the crusty old wildlife dioramas
at New York's Museum of Natural History. Without official permission,
she sneaked around taking photos that she later digitally altered and
added to. The seamless hybrid images look straightforward at first,
then get stranger the longer you gaze at them.
Taking familiar material and turning it into something new and
intriguing has been a constant theme in Zahalka's career. At the Art
Gallery of NSW, a group of women is clustered around The Bathers
#2, which re-stages Charles Meere's famous painting Australian
Beach Pattern with a more multicultural cast. While the women spot
the similarities and differences, I am drawn to the enormous,
seductive prints from Leisureland, a later, more documentary-style
series exploring how Australians choose to entertain themselves en
masse, from casinos to footy games to literary lectures. Though I
don't recall ever attending a wood-chopping competition, Zahalka's
photograph evokes a stab of nostalgic recognition.
"She doesn't hit you over the head with a cricket bat," says Naomi
Evans, curator at Roslyn Oxley9. "She does leave room in her work
for the viewer to bring their own history and memory to the pieces."
Zahalka was born in Sydney. Her Czech father and Viennese mother
immigrated with her older sister to Australia in 1949. Her father had a
panel-beating shop where his daughter helped out, rubbing down the
duco on cars. "It had to be 'soft as a baby's bottom'," she recalls. He
wanted her to be a secretary but she ended up at the Sydney College
of the Arts, creating photo montages using images cut from
magazines until someone suggested she learn to take her own
photos. Only then did she fall under the spell of the lens.
Much later Zahalka discovered her great-grandfather was a keen
amateur, documenting Czech peasants with a "big old plate camera".
Her US-based aunt, also a photographer, donated her 1940s
Rolleiflex camera to her niece, which Zahalka still uses. "So maybe
it's in the blood."
Though she was "blonde-haired and grew up in Neutral Bay",
Zahalka's migrant background gave her a sense of difference that is
reflected in some of her recurring themes, such as the deconstruction
of mythologies promoted in iconic Australian images like Sunbaker.
"Those things contribute to how you reflect and see your place in
society and at times what isn't reflected about your experience," she
says.
The Sunbather #2 and The Bathers belong to a series she shot at
Bondi in the late '80s. It includes one of her personal favourites, The
Surfers, showing three young wetsuit-clad Japanese men with their
surfboards. Zahalka chased them down Campbell Parade to ask
them to pose for her. "What I love about it is they occupy this space
that is usually set aside for white Anglo-saxon males and there's
something quite unsettling about it."
One of her most recent works, created for the Melbourne survey,
goes a step further - in The Girls #2, three young Muslim women clad
head-to-foot in colourful Lycra "burquinis" stand on Cronulla Beach,
arms folded, staring directly into the lens. Nearly two decades after
The Surfers, the issue of who "belongs" on the beach remains. This
helps set Zahalka's work apart, says Karra Rees, curator of the
Centre for Contemporary Photography show. While other artists' early
efforts often look dated, "her work seems to become more and more
relevant".
Zahalka is often quoted as saying she feels uncomfortable making
portraits. It's such a contrivance, she says, trying to make the subject
look natural when most people feel uneasy in front of the camera. Her
solution has been to shoot people she knows well, such as friends
and family (her husband appears in The Bathers, back row, second
from left), and to create staged, theatrical images, like her formative
Resemblances series with people posed in rich sets to emulate 17th-
century Dutch paintings.
Now, she says, she has started to embrace the unease and no longer
feels obliged to make her subjects feel good about their portraits. "If
you don't like how you appear, it's something I find interesting - why is
it that this is how you're being seen and shown but that's not how you
see yourself? It's a tricky area."
Self-portraits have always been part of her work; however when
someone else points the camera she is uneasy, too. When a
television arts program calls and asks to film her, Zahalka looks
worried. "I'm not very good at it," she explains on the phone.
Her reluctance to promote herself might explain why she is not as
well known as some of her contemporaries. She hates public
speaking and gets embarrassed at shows. "I don't often tell people
'that's actually my work over there'," she says, to the frustration of
some close to her. "My mother always says, 'You should make the
most of it'."
Yet even her mother must concede that Zahalka is not doing too
badly, with works in Australian and international collections, private
and public, and in art textbooks, including one for students her
daughter's age. A grant has allowed her to start work on the next
project, reinventing pub paintings from the 1930s to the 1960s, and
the Sunbather #2 snowdomes sold like hotcakes at the Melbourne
survey.
Seeing her work gathered there was both confronting ("you're faced
with the decisions you made 15 to 20 years ago") and satisfying,
though she still wonders at the position she has reached. "I didn't see
myself as particularly talented or gifted but I did have a real passion
and interest in visual arts and I can look over it now and think, well, I
have made some really important pictures." She laughs. "It makes me
realise I have contributed - perhaps I am allowed to celebrate this
moment a bit."
Anne Zahalka's work is showing at the Art Gallery of NSW until May 2
and Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne until May 12.
LINK:
http://www.smh.com.au/
http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/click-and-mythapproach/2007/04/12/1175971244440.html