Current Artist Obsession: Hazel Dooney
Dangerous Career Babe: The Trophy Wife
It might be because she takes sexually suggestive photos of hot women (go here for a seriously NSFW pic), but I'm obsessed with Australian artist Hazel Dooney's work. Dooney's new show, PORNO, just opened in Melbourne, and her controversial subjects, namely sex, have garnered her a fair amount of press. I don't think she's a lesbian, but her work is definitely lady and sex-friendly.
Many people will argue that depictions of sex are nothing more than pornography, and are not suitable for showing in museums or galleries, but to me sex and art are almost inseparable, and anything important enough for us to do every day is worthy of deconstruction and representation in art.
Dooney serves as the model for many of her pieces, and her work ranges from paintings to drawings. In all of them she challenges and reshapes identities and ideas:
2004's Self Vs. Self critiques the porn industry, a reworking of the theme "sex sells." The renderings of two women in sexual situations become complex when you realize that the women are identical to each other.
2006's Venus In Hell: New Works On Paper, explores voodoo and santeria, marking a change from her early self-portraits.
2007's Kelly, The First Time, was censored at Art Melbourne. The six-panel narrative depicting a woman having sex with a man are accompanied by Dooney's artist statement:
For too long,
I kept my sexuality to myself,
like some dark secret.
Still, curiosity oozed from my skin,
its scent an exotic pheromone.
I struggled to keep it at bay,
too afraid to surrender to it.
The last thing I expected
when I fell in love with him
was to find freedom.
Now I can explore the limits
of this once hidden territory.
Go here to see more of her work. She also writes a great blog, Self Vs. Self.
2 comments:
The Self Vs. Self is just incredible. The figures in the work are indeed battling with themselves in nearly nude situations but I couldn't help but wonder if we've all felt that way one time or another. Self vs. Self is the first human response we have.
I think her latest photographic work is incredibly brave – or foolhardy. I mean what other young, well-known artist would dare portray herself in such explicit acts and yet by including herself in her subject matter, she increases its power. Her painting is conceptually strong, despite its glossy surface, but the photos of PORNO are intellectually and emotionally explosive. Interestingly, the art establishment ignores her – maybe because she makes a point of having nothing to do with it and is still very successful.
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