Mentoring / Joy Development

 

Joy Development mentoring for artists, writers, creatives

Join me on my Joy Development Substack to see how I envision more creative joy for us all.

Have you found career success, but instead of feeling confident and secure, found yourself fearful of how others see you? Do you see competitors rather than allies?


Have you begun a new journey as a creative after years in a job that didn’t feel like you? Do you feel being an artist is your true self, but years of living as a people-pleasing false-self have taken their toll?


Or maybe your wider activism means, when you come back to your practice, you don’t see its value? Maybe your practice even feels frivolous, particularly in our current political and environmental climate?

Do you live in the chaos of all of your ideas? Before breakfast, you’ve solved all the world’s problems. By lunch, you don’t know which solution is your priority. By tea, the overwhelm has taken over…

I can help.

By hearing your dreams and visions and identifying the excessive tangle of spaghetti strands stuck together that have become burdens and limitations, we will work together to pick out the individual strands that matter most to you. I will suggest practical strategies to nurture what matters to you and manifest your ideas in the brightest, boldest ways.

We will refuse limiting beliefs and we will hold dear your tender visions together.

HOW I WORK

My philosophy respects that you already know what you want to create. I am here to help you find your ‘why’. If you deeply understand this you will unlock the boundless possibilities for your own practice.

ABOUT ALLIE CARR

For more than a decade I have worked as a university lecturer and before then as an artist-practitioner in community, museum, and school settings. I have observed time and again that artists and visionaries need to feel they have permission to do what they do—and when they cultivate this for themselves, the magic happens.

I am also a practicing artist myself, and while I draw on this to give professional advice, the tools I have developed to nourish my creativity and resilience come from the experience of overwork and overwhelm that led to a migraine that lasted nearly 10 months and chronic headache problems for the next five years.

Everything in my life seemed to feed the pain—my ambition, all the toxic feelings around work I was carrying, the numerous ways I was limiting myself through my own mindset. It was a negative spiral. I felt professionally invisible and this compounded the physical pain, which made me less visible.

This was a catalyst moment and since then I have spent time working on methods to handle stress and the precarity of my work life. I developed boundaries and eliminated any people-pleasing. I have learned to say what I need in order to feel safe, secure, and able to flourish. I concentrated on giving myself permission to feel and I rejected the cliched narratives of a frustrated artist. It opened up space for my own joy and pleasure in my practice, to reframe what a practice might look like.

Since sharing these insights in my friendships and mentoring relationships I have empowered others to feel more confident in the work they do and have a range of practical tools to draw on when they wobble. I realised it is time to share my mentoring work more broadly.

WHAT I CAN OFFER YOU

I want you to feel more joyful and empowered, to refuse the self-punishment and ‘work-harder’ narratives.

I will share with you how to cultivate more confidence, integrity, and resilience to handle whatever your career might throw at you and to enjoy the journey.

You’ve been doing what you do for some time, but you’re feeling some burnout. Or you are refocusing on your practice after time away. I can guide you through a period of personal or creative evolution, so that you can identify your own sustainable work solutions.

We can work in an expanded way, negotiating what would work for you. From in-person meetings (Sheffield only), video calls, WhatsApp voice notes or email check-ins so that you can feel supported as you rebuild your vision.

How shall we begin? Complete this registration form so I can get to know you. If you’d like a no-strings informal chat book in a call with me. Even if now isn’t the right time for you to work with me, I’d love to connect. Follow my Instagram account here, Artistic Mystic and and subscribe to my Substack, Joy Development.

2023

 
They Danced As One 2023-

42 minutes

Cinematography & Editor: Helena Öhman

Sound Design: Rob Bentall (to be produced)

In 2019 the surviving Tiller Girls, representing many different generations of dancers, met up for a reunion in Blackpool—a key home of the troupe. I went along with Helena Öhman, to record the event and talk to the women.

The footage of the event shows glamorous older women, posing, chatting, laughing, negotiating one another, reliving memories, and showing me how to link arms as a Tiller Girl.

Interposed text highlights speech, emphasising the insights and opinions that develop and challenge earlier video works. Black and white archival footage of filmed theatre performances depict Tiller Girl dances giving visual descriptions to pair with the stories.

2021

 
Still from Modernity / Power
Video, 12.50 mins
Made from appropriated backstage musical Hollywood films made between 1929 and 1940, Modernity / Power reframes latent power dynamics on the screen through text interventions and foley sound–clips, clicks, clapping, tap-dancing, and breathing. These disruptions draw attention to the labour of the bodies performing and their incredible skills.

Pose and Shadow, Alexandra Danilova
Watercolour on A4 watercolour (300gsm) paper (210 x 297 mm)

2010

 
Being & Becoming, 2010
Colour photograph, 30 cm x 40 cm
Assembling My Critical Tools & Trying Them Out, 2010
Performance Conference Paper, 11 minutes
Assembling My Critical Tools & Trying Them Out, 2010
Performance Conference Paper, 11 minutes
Assembling My Critical Tools & Trying Them Out, 2010
Performance Conference Paper, 11 minutes
Assembling My Critical Tools & Trying Them Out, 2010
Performance Conference Paper, 11 minutes
Assembling My Critical Tools & Trying Them Out, 2010
Performance Conference Paper, 11 minutes

2008

 

Art Encounters (2008) 

An audio piece.  I recount some formative art encounters, in order to think about what remains of the encounter.  The afterwards reflections; did these experiences form the artist I am now?  I presented this as part of the Mid-Residency group show at CalArts.

Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, Mlle De Bremont (2008)
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm

Recreations of found cigarette cards from 1939, using myself.

Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, Maria Gregor (2008)
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm
Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, Maryse Grandt (2008)
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm
Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, Jacqueline Ford (2008)
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm
Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, Iya (2008)
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm
Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, Ginette Vrala (2008)
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm
Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, Getty Jasonne (2008)
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm
Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, Erni Erika (2008)
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm
Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, Catherine Hamilton (2008)
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm


One afternoon in 2005, I came across a tin full of cigarette cards at a flea market. I leafed through to look more closely at the miniature pin-ups. I noticed the backs of the cards with the dated biographies of the girls on the cards. I selected all the dancers from the tin (there were actresses, models, swimmers and tennis players I rejected, no one in the tin I had heard of before) and bought all of them. As I walked home, I decided to recreate all the photographs using myself as the model. The original cigarette cards were objects to be held, looked at closely. They were private cards to view, collect and exchange. As enclosures in cigarette packs in the late 1930s, it was presumed that these were gifts for a male consumer. Looking at them with contemporary eyes, they look glamorous, innocent, staged and seductive.

2006

 
Me Against The Music, 2006
Performance, 8 mins
Just For Fun, an evening of karaoke and performance organised by Robin Close, Scott Webster and Alexis Gotts
Me Against The Music, 2006
Performance, 8 mins
Just For Fun, an evening of karaoke and performance organised by Robin Close, Scott Webster and Alexis Gotts
Me Against The Music, 2006
Performance, 8 mins
Just For Fun, an evening of karaoke and performance organised by Robin Close, Scott Webster and Alexis Gotts
Me Against The Music, 2006
Performance, 8 mins
Just For Fun, an evening of karaoke and performance organised by Robin Close, Scott Webster and Alexis Gotts
Me Against The Music, 2006
Performance, 8 mins
Just For Fun, an evening of karaoke and performance organised by Robin Close, Scott Webster and Alexis Gotts
Me Against The Music, 2006
Performance, 8 mins
Just For Fun, an evening of karaoke and performance organised by Robin Close, Scott Webster and Alexis Gotts

Allie Carr loves dancing.  She dances about everyday.  If she couldn’t dance she would be depressed.  Allie Carr will dance in public tonight as if she was dancing around her house or at nightclubs.  She is going to attempt to dance to a mix tape of unknown tunes put together for her by Alexis Gotts.  She might not be able to do it.  She might freeze.  The music might not excite her.  She may be rendered static.  (I doubt it.) Her friend and long time collaborator Matt Lewis will be on hand to adjudicate.  Using his wholly untrained eye, he will officiate whether the music has beaten Allie or if Allie has beaten the music.

2019

 
A Place To Perform (Because Other Places Were Inhospitable), 2019
70 cm x 35 cm
Giclee photograph on smooth white cotton paper
Bubikopf, 2019
Performance, 40 mins

Bubikopf is an art history lecture on gender that morphs. An examination of women in the modernity of the Weimar Republic with new opportunities to be independent in the city, to go to art school, perform in cabarets. Weaving together gendered forms of feminine visibility this piece spotlights and speculates women’s entertaining, creative and Avant Garde work.

Bubikopf, 2019
Performance, 40 mins
Bubikopf, 2019
Performance, 40 mins
Bubikopf, 2019
Performance, 40 mins
Bubikopf, 2019
Performance, 40 mins
Ascending A Staircase, Library Theatre, Sheffield, 1934, 2019
Giclee print on white cotton rag paper, edition of 5, 84 cm x 84 cm
Edition of 15, 34 cm x 34 cm
Ascending A Staircase, City Varities, Leeds, 1865, 2019
Giclee print on white cotton rag paper, edition of 5, 84 cm x 84 cm
Edition of 15, 34 cm x 34 cm
Ascending A Staircase, North Pier Theatre, Blackpool,1863, 2019
Giclee print on white cotton rag paper, edition of 5, 84 cm x 84 cm
Edition of 15, 34 cm x 34 cm
Ascending A Staircase, Stockport Plaza, Stockport, 1932, 2019
Giclee print on white cotton rag paper, edition of 5, 84 cm x 84 cm
Edition of 15, 34 cm x 34 cm
Ascending A Staircase, Stockport Plaza, Stockport, 1932, 2019
Giclee print on white cotton rag paper, edition of 5, 84 cm x 84 cm
Edition of 15, 34 cm x 34 cm
Ascending A Staircase, North Pier Theatre, Blackpool,1863, 2019
Giclee print on white cotton rag paper, edition of 5, 84 cm x 84 cm
Edition of 15, 34 cm x 34 cm
Ascending A Staircase, Victoria Theatre, Halifax, 1901, 2019
Giclee print on white cotton rag paper, edition of 5, 84 cm x 84 cm
Edition of 15, 34 cm x 34 cm
Ascending A Staircase, Pendle Hippodrome, Pendle, 1914, 2019
Giclee print on white cotton rag paper, edition of 5, 84 cm x 84 cm
Edition of 15, 34 cm x 34 cm
Ascending A Staircase, Lyceum, Sheffield, 1897, 2019
Giclee print on white cotton rag paper, edition of 5, 84 cm x 84 cm
Edition of 15, 34 cm x 34 cm
Ascending A Staircase, Pomegranate, Chesterfield, 1879, 2019
Giclee print on white cotton rag paper, edition of 5, 84 cm x 84 cm
Edition of 15, 34 cm x 34 cm
Ascending A Staircase, Darlington Hippodrome, Darlington, 1907, 2019
Giclee print on white cotton rag paper, edition of 5, 84 cm x 84 cm
Edition of 15, 34 cm x 34 cm
Ascending A Staircase, Penistone Paramount, Penistone, 1914, 2019
Giclee print on white cotton rag paper, edition of 5, 84 cm x 84 cm
Edition of 15, 34 cm x 34 cm

2020

 
Ascending A Staircase, Grand Theatre, Blackpool, 1894, 2020
Giclee print on white cotton rag paper, edition of 5, 84 cm x 84 cm
Edition of 15, 34 cm x 34 cm
How Can I Perform As An Image? (Catherine Hamilton and Burgundy Circle)
Collage on A4 watercolour (300gsm) paper (210 x 297 mm)
How Can I Perform As An Image (Getty Jasonne with Gold Triangle Head)
Collage on A4 watercolour (300gsm) paper (210 x 297 mm)
How Can I Perform As An Image? (Erni Erica with Gold Square)
Collage on A4 watercolour (300gsm) paper (210 x 297 mm)
How Can I Perform As An Image (Abstract / Bauhaus Catherine Hamilton)
Collage on A4 paper (210 x 297 mm)
How Can I Perform As An Image? (multicolour silhouette Getty Jasonne)
Watercolour on A4 paper (210 x 297 mm)
Pose and Shadow, Dorothy Dilley
Watercolour on A4 watercolour (300gsm) paper (210 x 297 mm)

2018

 
Felicity Means Happiness, 2018
Video, 16 mins

The story of a 98-year old former chorus girl. In the thirties, Felicity was a Bluebell Young Lady. She toured France, Germany, and Italy until WW2 was declared in Italy. Felicity Means Happiness shows Felicity, telling her stories, and Carr showing Felicity her artworks inspired by 1930s dancers, and footage of an Austrian film Felicity was in. What is conveyed is the connection between the two women as well as the realities of dancing and living independently in the thirties.
Bauhaus Bühnenchor, 2018
Performance, 35 mins
Construction House, S1 Artspace

Choreography by Lucy Haighton
Scarf design by Katy Aston / Fison Zair
Performers: Celia Anderson, Julia Bisby, Jo Dunkly, Liz Searle, Emily Stokes, and Roanna Wells.

Bauhaus Bühnenchor is a live performance that experiments with the girl troupe kickline. Using the kickline as a form with the potential to represent women’s collective and creative force Bauhaus Bühnenchor imagines the experiences of Weimarian female art students and chorus girls as well considering the context of dancing in a troupe today. 

2014

 
Theatre Flats, 2014
Blueback paper photographs mounted onto MDF, freestanding in space
Dimensions approx 2 m x 1 m
Tap Performance-7292 72
Tap Performance for Gallery with Many Dancers, 2014 
Performance 4 mins
Three Act Structures, S1 Artspace, Sheffield
Hollywood Forever, 2014
Video, 3 mins
The Mucky Bits, 2014
Online gallery of photographs taken of book pages

My contribution to Sharon Kivland’s Library Interventions at Leeds College of Art.  I rifled through books searching only the racy and erotic pictures and photographing them–always with Sharon’s titillation in mind.
Ginette Vrala / Socialist Red / Neoliberal Pink, 2014
Half-tone screenprint on Keykolour Original Snow White 300gsm paper,
35cm x 50cm, framed dimensions 49cm x 64cm
Edition of 50
Help Me Pose, 2014
One-to-one performance, 4 mins
Wrought, Sheffield  

2009

 
Woman As Image Single Channel Edit, 2009
Originally presented as a two-channel durational installation for my CalArts thesis show, re-edited for theatre viewing.
We Cross Sometimes, 2009 

Living on a ranch in the small working-class town of Santa Paula in California, I filmed psychics visiting the ranch to find the hidden stories.

Aug 162019
 

Documentation from my exhibition at Bloc Projects as part of Platform 2019 exhibitions through Site.

Audio recording of performance Two Songs A Capella and gallery talk, on Bloc Project’s website.

Photo Jules Lister
Photo Jules Lister
Photo Jules Lister
Photo Jules Lister
Photo Jules Lister
Photo Jules Lister
Photo Jules Lister
Photo Jules Lister
Photo Jules Lister
Photo Jules Lister
Photo Jules Lister
Photo Jules Lister
Photo Jules Lister
Jan 052019
 

Here are some photographs from the exhibition I recently put together, based around my book, Viewing Pleasure and Being A Showgirl, How Do I Look? Thanks to the artists who took part: Sophie Lisa Beresford, Julie Cook, Nwando Ebizie as Lady Vendredi, Alice Finch, Laura Gonzalez, Lucy Halstead, Sharon Kivland, Britten Leigh, Chloe Nightingale, and Isabella Streffen. 

Sep 202018
 

I had so much fun showing my work at Abingdon Studios in Blackpool. Here’s the documentation. I am so grateful to show my new video work Felicity Means Happiness for the first time in Blackpool.

Photo Matt Wilkinson, Abingdon Studios Project Space
Photo Matt Wilkinson, Abingdon Studios Project Space
Photo Matt Wilkinson, Abingdon Studios Project Space
Photo Matt Wilkinson, Abingdon Studios Project Space
Photo Matt Wilkinson, Abingdon Studios Project Space
Photo Matt Wilkinson, Abingdon Studios Project Space
Photo Matt Wilkinson, Abingdon Studios Project Space
Apr 052018
 
Left to right: Manifesto, 2017, Ascending A Staircase, Library Theatre, Sheffield, 2018, Ascending A Staircase, City Varieties, Leeds

Rowan Bailey put together the first show at the Market Gallery as part of the Temporary Contemporary collaboration between the University of Huddersfield and Kirklees Council and the Huddersfield covered market. Space, Place Action brought together the research staff at the university. I used the opportunity to test out my new series of theatre interior photographs, Ascending A Staircase.

Jan 202018
 

Sean Williams’s exhibition For A Burning Love has transferred to The Old Lock Up, Cromford. 

Contemporary British Painting featured the show in it’s newsletter: 

For a Burning Love

In January ‘For a Burning Love’ moves to the Old Lock Up Gallery in Cromford, a space that, fittingly some might say, used to be a jail. ‘For a Burning Love‘ celebrates and demonstrates the breadth of contemporary painting and includes works by Mandy Payne and Sean Williams. It encompasses highly-detailed realism and gestural abstraction, paintings that are almost sculptures and photographs interrupted by the introduction of paint. In this way ‘For a Burning Love’ questions what a painting might be and so, in turn, questions our fixed ideas about most things. ‘For a Burning Love’ may also offer a clue into why artists choose to use paint over other media to express their ideas and explore possibilities.

The Old Lock Up Gallery
19 The Hill, Swifts Hollow, Cromford, Derbyshire, DE4 3QHJ

Preview: Saturday January 20th, 1 – 4pm
Exhibition dates: 20 January – 25 February
Opening times: Thursday – Saturday 11am – 6pm, Sunday 11am -4.30pm

Jan 162018
 

A chapter I have written on the representation of strippers in the media and contemporary art has been published. It is in the Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality by Clarissa Smith, Feona Attwood and Brian McNair.

In it, I write about pop videos, films, popular feminist critical perspectives, academic writing, and activism. I also write about artworks including the Girlie Show by Edward Hopper, Lucky 13 by Philip-Lorca Di Corca, The Politics of Rehearsal by Francis Alys, Abstraction Licking by Christina Lucas, Cosey Fanni Tutti’s collages, Strip by Jemima Stehli, performance pieces Strike a Pose by Kate Spence, and Sister by Rosana and Amy Cade.

 

 

Jul 182014
 

My work will be in Act II and Act III of S1 Member’s Show, Three Act Structure at S1 Artspace, Sheffield.  Act II is open 6th August–23rd August and Act III which is a re-mix of Acts I and II featuring all of the works is open 27th August–13th September.  The opening of the whole show was on 11th July, and now there is a programme of events that will take place during the subsequent Acts.

In particular there will be a publication and print portfolio launch on Friday 15th August and a screening and performance event on Saturday 6th September.  For the latter I am working on a new performance.

I’ll post more about the up-coming events–it’s a very exciting project to be involved in!

May 012014
 

I instigated a video show collaboratively curated with Megan Cotts, Alexis Hudgins, Ali Prosch & Brica Wilcox shown at SIA Gallery in May.  The show featured ten video works by Alison J Carr, Alexis Hudgins, Ivan Iannoli, Julie Orser & Jon Irving, Ali Prosch, Elleni Sclaventis, Matt Siegle, amy von harrington, Brica Wilcox, that respond to the provocation of Hollywood Forever: the dream, the film industry, the cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard.  Each takes a different approach to Hollywood—from considering the myth, the geography, the surplus of images it gives us, the imperative to perform, the seduction and the make-believe.

More information about the project Hollywood Forever Bios.

image credit Julie Orser & Jon Irving, from The Viewer

Julie_Orser_Jon_Irving_005

Feb 182014
 

I’ve put together a selection of videos to be screened at S1 Artspace, Thu 20 Feb, 6 – 8pm:

Alison J Carr | Lindsay Foster | Alexis Hudgins | Stephanie Owens | Isabella Streffen | Katy Woods

S1 Artspace is pleased to present You Me You Me You Me, a screening of six short video works which will be followed by a discussion between artists Alison J Carr and Lindsay Foster.

In this screening, S1 Studio Holder, Alison J Carr, selected Lindsay Foster’s The Last Frontier as a starting point alongside which she presents four additional works: Notes on You and Me by Alexis Hudgins, The Pulse of Madame K by Isabella Streffen, Nadia by Katy Woods, and her own A Response to Unmastered by Katherine Angel; inviting Foster to select a final piece to sit alongside her own: Making A Past Present by Stephanie Owens.

The videos take different approaches to reflect on personal experiences and collective memories, on images and language and how we find ourselves formed through our encounters with culture. Across the selection are witty, playful observations as well as sincere enquiries. What is it to be a person?

 

Alexis Hudgins, Notes on You and Me, 2010
Alexis Hudgins, Notes on You & Me, 2010
Jun 172012
 

Andrea Fraser takes up the position of the stripping woman in her performance Official Welcome, in which she addresses an assembled art audience giving an introduction to ‘the artist Andrea Fraser’.  The scripted dialogue, in which she performs ‘artist’ and ‘supporter’ quotes a number of collectors’ and artists’ real introductions and acceptance speeches, all delivered whilst Frasers strips naked and then clothes herself again by the end of the performance:  

Artist: Yeah, the art world likes “bad girls.”  But if you tell the truth and people don’t want to hear the truth.  If you’re honest about how stupid and fucked over life is, you end up in the tabloids.  I don’t go looking for it.  It just comes in a big stinking tidal wave. Removing bra, then shoes, then thong. I’m used to it.  It’s boring. […]  

Supporter: Well, thank you.  Thank you for your dedication, for your vision, for your life.  I think we all must dare, as artists do, to break free of the past and to create a better future, rooted in the values that never change.  That’s the great lesson our artists teach us.

Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser (2005) Andrea Fraser ed. Alexander Alberro




Fraser’s work can be understood within the context ‘Institutional Critique’, as pioneered by the artists Hans Haacke and Michael Asher.  Within this positioning her work takes on an intellectually engaged examination of what we expect a contemporary artist to give us; she subverts what we think art is by conflating the site of the artwork, the museum, the collector, the critic and the performer.  Can we be sure where they all begin and end? 

The project ‘Untitled’ is also really worth looking up.  Fraser’s work is always smart and fearless and I have incredible respect for her practice.  

Jun 172012
 

I feel I shall have to transition from photography and video and into live art and performance practices to really continue this list.  Before I do, I shall just list women photographers who in some way address the Showgirlian.

Elinor Carucci is a photographer by day, but a belly dancer by night.  She’s documented her dancing life in the book and series ‘Diary of a Dancer‘.  A well-observed project in which we see the types of venues, audiences, costumes, dance moves, preparations and the come down following performing.  Its documentary and a diary.  Just through pictures, a complex narrative is told.  With lots of sequins.

Katharina Bosse‘s book New Burlesque is a fabulous collection of portraits of New Burlesque dancers.  The dancers look fabulous in clothes the look like they could be performance costume, or in some cases, sassy day wear.  The pose and flirt with the camera knowingly, in domestic spaces, corners of cafes and deserts – nowhere you’d expect to find them.  They are there, at the beginning of this new movement, carving out a space for themselves. It is a joyous book.

Jo Ann Callis‘s practice spans decades.  I saw an exhibition of her work at the Getty Center, Los Angeles and I made loads of notes as I wanted to review the show for a magazine (I didn’t in the end).  But you know, I almost feel that to write about Callis’s work is a redundant gesture.  I don’t think they need much introduction.  I adore her photographs and I love looking at them.  Much of her work is concerned with femininity and the experience of being a woman.  Just take a browse round her website.  Look out for ‘Woman Twirling’ and ‘Performance’.  She taught me when I was at CalArts, and she was just had so much style, I would wear any of her outfits.

 
Katy Grannan makes portraits of people who respond to her newspaper adverts. Much of her work early photographs were of teenage girls, naked, who had responded to her requests.
Jun 172012
 

To reduce Sophie Calle‘s down to just the work she did stripping is a sin. However, this is what I shall do here and now.  Please go look up Calle’s wider practice if she’s new to you.

 

Sophie Calle’s practice is brave, transgressive, self-reflexive, uses herself. But it’s wider than that, its also about how we perform ourselves, how we connect to other people, how our emotions shape us.  How we look, and how we are looked at.  

Jun 172012
 

Viva, 2009, dir. Anna Biller

In feature film, Viva artist/filmmaker Anna Biller constructed a recreation of a Seventies sexploitation movie.[1]  The film is an uncomfortable mix of camp pastiche and truthful real-emotions storyline, which sees Barbie/Viva going on a journey of sexual emancipation.  The final scene, celebratory and sad, sees Barbie and her friend in a down-market recreation of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell’s number Two Little Girls from Little Rock from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.[2]  For Biller, the aim is to negotiate how female desire might be represented and provoked.  Most interesting to Biller are the responses she receives from female viewers in support of the film; women can read the resistance in the film, but she finds male viewers only see pastiche.[3]

[1] Anna Biller (2009) Viva  [film] Los Angeles, CA: Cult Epics.

[2] Howard Hawks, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, Charles Coburn, Sol C. Siegel, Charles Lederer, Joseph A. Fields, and Anita Loos (1953) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes [film] Beverly Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2001.

[3] I talked to Anna Biller about the film in September 2010, LA.

Jun 172012
 

 

Jemima Stehli adopted the position of the stripper in her photographic series Strip, in which she questioned the designation of power in the art world within a voyeuristic framework.  She stands with her back to the camera in front of a seated male who is identified only by his job title, ‘Critic’, ‘Writer’, ‘Curator’ or ‘Dealer’.  A long cable-release is visible in his hand.  In each photograph Stehli is in a different state of undress caught in the act of stripping.  The precise moment the photograph was taken during this private strip is controlled by the seated male, his power doubled through the status of his job in the art world.  And yet, he is the pawn within Stehli’s game.  She has created the scenario; it is her concept, her intellect, her skill, and her body that she chooses to display.  She is active.  The seated male is unable to not look; he must play the stooge.  The photograph registers his level of satisfaction or discomfort: is that us, the viewer, looking at ourselves?

Jun 172012
 

Leigh Ledare represents a transition into the frame, and a new way of approaching the showgirl.  Now, my examples will be about embodying or trying out the showgirl, and thus, the following examples are about what she symbolises, how she can be used, rather than, who is she?

Let’s start with two recent examples.  Liz Cohen and Nikki S Lee put themselves into their photographs and literally embody the woman-as-object, but through that embodiment, we have to deal with the concept of the woman-as-object having a brain.  These approaches bring intelligence into the body. 
 
Liz Cohen turns a Trabant into an El Camino, and herself from mechanic to bikini clad model posing on the car.  Two kinds of body transformation.
 
Nikki S Lee goes native in particular social groups.  The documented results show her passing as one of the gang.  Amongst the groups, she’s become part of where exotic dancers. 

It’s worth pointing out, that these practices would not exist without a number of female photographers, whose work engages less with a Showgirlian impulse, but women-in-representation.  So, look up, if you don’t already know:
Claude Cahun
Hannah Wilkie
Cindy Sherman
Renee Cox

Jun 172012
 

Time for something more contemporary!  Here are four male image-makers (they work in photo & video) who are using the figure of the stripper as a site of exploration.  They show a fascination with the stripper but also work to expand our understanding of who she is and what she does.

Philip Lorca DiCorcia creates portraits that reinvigorate the form.  He does more than portraits, actually, and his photographs always command my attention.  He created a series of photographs of pole-dancers in action.  I sense Lorca DiCorcia’s admiration and attempt to fathom the pole-dancer’s milieu in the photographs.

 

Tom Hunters photographs tell stories of contemporary life.  Inspired by newspaper headlines, sensational reporting and more Pre-Raphaelite compositional tropes, among other things, Hunter’s photographs are complex, full of detail and place our contemporary context into a historical one.  And his photographs are (say it quietly) beautiful.

Mainly using video Francis Alys explores social constructions.  He’s used a stripper combined with audio from a singer’s practicing exercises, to explore where a (public) performance begins and ends.  Here, he employs the stripper’s performing, moving body, with it’s techniques and expertise, and yet this is not directly the subject of the work, rather, the stripper is used to construct something new in the artwork.

Ok, so now things are getting really interesting.  Leigh Ledare‘s work is just amazing and mind-blowing (and I’m jealous of his practice, not to mention the way he always finishes the work is such a sophisticated way).  I’ve blogged about his work before, here.  One day Leigh visited his Mom’s and she opened the door, naked, having just got up from sex with a younger man.  Thus, she announced her sexuality to her son.  Mom had been a ballet dancer, exotic dancer and placed ads looking for men to look after her.  She approached Leigh to document her sexuality.  Leigh does so, in an intelligent, sensitive and self-reflexive way.  Never leaving Mom to be the subject of a forensic, pathologised study.  His practice has included photographs of Mom in flagrante, her posing for him, sometimes he is in the frame, sometimes they are having innocent fun together, other times something more erotic is inferred.  Also, handwritten notes from Mom, from his younger self further contextualise their relationship.  Mom resolutely takes an active role in the images.  Her challenging unrepentant gaze frequently looks out at us.  And Leigh’s newer works trace Mom’s actions, but using himself, by placing his own ads in papers and soliciting women to make photographs that objectify him.  In Leigh’s work, subject-object politics is always complex.  

 

 

Jun 172012
 

Another approach taken has been for documentary photographers to observe the porn industry.  Their photographs serve to deconstruct the usual image-constructions of pornography and create quite mesmerising images.  However, as with all documentary images, we must remain alert to the fact that the documentarist positions himself outside of what he sees, as a neutral observing.  Its a position of privilege to suggest that the author-position is neutral and objective.

Larry Sultan’s project ‘The Valley’ is an exploration of the porn industry
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders porn portraits

Jun 172012
 

Edward Hopper’s haunting paintings recreate Modern city life in the sparest terms.  He empties out all details that do not create the narrative he is after and what’s left in his composition have become archetypes.  The film ‘Pennies from Heaven’ consciously quotes his painting scenes to mesmerising effect.  
However, a little known photo ‘Girlie Show’ is why I’m listing Hopper.  He created the painting after visiting a burlesque show, and restaged the entrance of the dancer with his wife.  Thus, the painting is a composite of the memory of a theatrical encounter, and an homage to his wife with whom he had a complicated sexual relation. 

Jun 172012
 
How does art respond to and extend our understanding of the showgirl?  I have put together some examples that explore woman-as-object (my interest is in showgirls, but this list is broader than that).  The idea for putting this together came to me whilst reading Katy Pilcher’s article ‘Performing in a Night-Time Leisure Venue: A Visual Analysis of Erotic Dance’.  In the paper, Pilcher uses photographs to elicit attitudes and opinions from the subjects of the photographs.  It reminded me of the approaches taken by artists: sometimes their works suggest a co-authoring between the subject and object, sometimes the subject in the work is further objectified, sometimes the role of the subject is embodied.  I have put this list together to try to show this breadth of approach.  The time period in which the works are created plays a role and I also noticed gender was a significant factor in the type of approach taken.  I shall start by presenting male artists.  I’m using the term ‘artists’ somewhat loosely, as there are practices here that belong to a photographic tradition rather than something more conceptually and critically engaged (that also reflects conversations in image-making, as the time-period of production also bears on the work made).
 
 
I love Walter Bird and I went to see his photographs at the archive in the National Media Museum in Bradford.  His photographs create an undisputable, enchanting glamour.  Sometimes I find myself wanting to reject all objectifying images made by men of women, but then, I see Walter Bird’s photographs, that are so powerful, respectful and glamorous and I cannot maintain that critical position.  Something complex more complex is going on.  Of course, in Bird’s photographs, Hollywood films of the 1930s and the associated film star portraits, women are constructed as glamorous goddesses in lieu of power either in the narrative or in society (see ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by Laura Mulvey).  However, this construction of woman-as-image now is a very different thing – can we create a new context for the images and reject the related powerlessness women represented at the time?
 
I’m not going to add them to the list, but the other image-makers that fit into this Walter Bird category of, shall we say, glamorously subjectifying women are: Guy Bourdain, Helmet Newton and Howard Hawks.  All worth looking at.
Jun 212010
 
Review of Leigh Ledare: The Confectioner’s Confectioner, 16th April – 5th June, Pilar Corrias, London
 
Leigh Ledare’s ongoing photography work generously reveals the relationship he has with his mother.  In the recent solo show at Pilar Corrias fragments from his childhood, notes written by Tina/Mom and himself make explicit some elements of their relationship.  Tina/Mom’s thoughts on models is a beautiful ode to the creativity of the photographer’s model, her informal hand-written will expose the love and trust she places in Leigh.  A narrative develops through the notes; the relationship with Dad ended, and Leigh, in some way become Mom’s man/boy.  She talked to him, revealed herself emotionally and physically.  As a ballet dancer, she was trained to be invested in her body, her artistic tool.  This is the back story.  One day, Tina/Mom asks Leigh to photograph her, to record her aging, vulnerable body now, before it is too late, before the flesh decays into an unphotographable state; before it can no longer be the object.  And so Leigh dutifully does.  Complicit in this recording, he is the third person in the room whilst Tina/Mom gets it on with Leigh-substitute boys.  Her acts performed for Leigh, a performance for his benefit.  Does she want to arouse Leigh?  Make him jealous?  Or push him to reject her out of repulsion for her sexuality, her aggressive exhibitionism designed to ensnare Leigh in an Oedipal game.  Does she want him to throw down the camera and fuck her, pushing aside his replacement?  Sometimes she is naked and alone, still enjoying her sexuality, but without a partner, less performed.  If Leigh did not record this, if he did not have his camera in the room, how would he have reacted?  How did he react, used as Tina/Mom’s sexual documenter?
 
Which answers the question, how can a sexually explicit photograph of a woman present without question the subjectivity of that woman, before or even preventing the objectification of that woman?  Through the Oedipal narrative, Leigh becomes less the exploiting photographer and more an equal participant with the subject.  The two locked into their fixed positions.  The captions with the photographs, descriptively position the image contents.  But even without such contexts, within the image frame, the faint silvery traces of stretch marks on Tina/Mom’s stomach testify to her mother status and jar with her version of maternal she is therefore enacting.
 
Leigh reaches beyond this project to challenge his own position from outside this mother-son courtship.  Understanding the plane of representation as ‘the site of the trauma’, the place in which his Mom revealed herself to him, but in a sense foreclosed other possibilities of their relationship, he places himself in Mom’s position by re-enacting her fantasies by being the fantasy for other women.  Leigh becomes women’s object, the Leigh-object: a gift for mother?  Leigh-photographer becomes Leigh-model relinquishing the responsibilities of the lens.

2007

 
Ladies-leaning-over-gate
I Saved You From Obscurity, Others Are Not So Lucky (2007)
Box 20 cm x 13 cm x 2 cm, photograph 17.5 cm x 12 cm
Card, satin, B&W photograph

A multiple of one of six different fibre-based, hand-printed photographs presented in a red-satin lined box. The photographs are made from negatives found in a Parisian flea market. A central portion of each photograph has been removed with a scalpel.
Interior-with-mirror
I Saved You From Obscurity, Others Are Not So Lucky (2007)
Box 20 cm x 13 cm x 2 cm, photograph 17.5 cm x 12 cm
Card, satin, B&W photograph
Interior-with-drawers
I Saved You From Obscurity, Others Are Not So Lucky (2007)
Box 20 cm x 13 cm x 2 cm, photograph 17.5 cm x 12 cm
Card, satin, B&W photograph
Beach-tall-lady
I Saved You From Obscurity, Others Are Not So Lucky (2007)
Box 20 cm x 13 cm x 2 cm, photograph 17.5 cm x 12 cm
Card, satin, B&W photograph
Beach-short-lady
I Saved You From Obscurity, Others Are Not So Lucky (2007)
Box 20 cm x 13 cm x 2 cm, photograph 17.5 cm x 12 cm
Card, satin, B&W photograph
3-people-outside-church
I Saved You From Obscurity, Others Are Not So Lucky (2007)
Box 20 cm x 13 cm x 2 cm, photograph 17.5 cm x 12 cm
Card, satin, B&W photograph
Shut-box
I Saved You From Obscurity, Others Are Not So Lucky (2007)
Box 20 cm x 13 cm x 2 cm, photograph 17.5 cm x 12 cm
Card, satin, B&W photograph
Spines

I saved you from obscurity, others are not so lucky

A found negative is a mystery–has the photograph ever been printed?  If so, how big was the photograph, how did it look, were they dearly loved images carried around, prints forgotten at the back of a drawer or large framed photographs?

This piece of work explores the mystery by presenting photographs from negatives found in a flea market in Paris, in a box fit for jewellery, but with a portion of the centre of the image carefully removed with a scalpel.  The benevolent gesture of saving these images is conditional.

The hole has other meanings too.  By taking out a crucial part of the centre of the photographs, even less is known.  The story is unfinished.  The hole gives the viewer licence to complete the picture themselves.  The photograph is whatever you want it to be.

This piece of work is a multiple and I have produced 100 numbered boxes with one of the six photographs in each.