"Femme Fatale: Anne Zahalka, Anne Wallace and Annette Bezor"
2002-01-30 until 2002-03-09
Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
Brisbane, QL, AU

In 2002 the IMA will present exhibitions from three women artists, Anne Zahalka, Anne Wallace and Annette Bezor, whose work is unified by their references to film, the viewer as voyeur, sexuality and identity. This is an extraordinarily beautiful selection of works by three truly talented artists.

In “Fortresses and Frontiers” Anne Zahalka uses light boxes to project photographs of Sydney as seen through the eyes of a tourist. Anne uses multiple images of Sydney that defy the expectations of what a tourist image would be. Sydney in these images is at once expansive yet tightly contained.

In Anne Wallace’s lush paintings we are once again witness to a tentative reality, one in which the viewer becomes a voyeur. In one of the paintings a woman stands outside a window staring at the viewer, in another painting a woman crouches in the corner with her hands on her head almost obscured by a table. These woman are frozen in time, playing out a life that we desperately want access to, to finish the narrative that eludes resolution.

When looking at Annette Bezor’s paintings our gaze is met and returned by the depicted faces of women. These larger than life images are taken from a myriad of sources - from pornographic movie stills to classical paintings - yet it is nearly impossible to tell which is which. Each face is painted on two separate canvases and it would seem that Bezor is trying to reconfigure a new identity for these women or possibly obliterate their prior associations, but still they are the object of our gaze.

IMAGE
Annette Bezor
Tension 5, 1999
oil/canvas
165 x 165 cm
Private Collection

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for Australia

Other Important Exhibitions in Australia