The Samstag Alumni

The 2001 Anne & Gordon Samstag
International Visual Arts Scholarships

Christine Collins | Shaun Gladwell | Glenys Hodgeman | Anne Kay | Fassih Keiso | Linda Marrinon | Archie Moore | Rea | John Spiteri | Paul White

Working with computer-manipulated photo-imaging processes the project of Rea has been to explore the power relations structuring representations of the black body, in particular the female black body. Photography has been a primary tool of the colonial system from the nineteenth century on, when the eye of the camera first shot and captured 'the other' as ethnographic specimen. Focusing more on representations of the black body in twentieth century popular kitsch, Rea revisits and remakes this history of images, reworking archival photographic material using digital technologies. The role of the viewer is always implicated in her work. We see our own image reflected through the use of mirrors or, as in the self-portrait from the series EYE/I'MMABLAKPIECE, Rea holds the camera to her face, refusing the objectifying gaze and turning it back on us.

In her most recent series she works with a generic image from an old postcard of an Aboriginal man standing naked, holding a spear, shield and spear thrower. (The man in the photo is One Pound Jimmy, an artist and father of the renowned painter Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri.) This image is placed alongside her self-portrait. Superimposed on the top of these images are a gun-scope and a shooting range target, making the connection between actual violent attrition against Aboriginal people in our past, and the more persistent cultural violence of misrepresentation.

Robyn McKenzie
From her Samstag catalogue essay
Art and Research

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• The Samstag Alumni

Don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes (detail) 1999
installation of mixed media, digital photographs
variable dimensions
© the artist

EYE/I'MMABLAKPIECE 1996
cibachrome print
165 x 80 cm
© the artist