art

Joy Development Mentoring

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.

You’ve been doing what you do for some time, but you’re feeling some burnout or a little bit lost in terms of how to organise and strategise your practice. 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.

Maybe you’ve 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? Are you still fearful of other’s perceptions of you?

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? It’s taking some time to evolve and you need structured support while you change.

Perhaps your work in activism means, that 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? You find it difficult to see how your purpose fits the bigger picture.

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… You’re lucky to be so creative, but you burn yourself out, how can you identify what matters most and see it through?

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. You will feel empowered and in control of your creativity and practice. You will find the joy in your work.

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

HOW I WORK

My philosophy respects you as a whole person. I do not judge your journey and our work will be confidential. I believe you already know what you want to do, want to create. I am here to help you find your own motivations, and refuse your limitations. I am here to guide you into new ways of working so that you can manifest your inspiration exactly as you envision it. When you deeply understand how to overcome your blocks, you can then unlock the boundless possibilities for your own practice.

MY STORY SO FAR

For more than a decade I 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 practising 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 developing 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 joy 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.

I draw on these experiences to empower others to feel more confident in the work they do and have a range of practical tools to draw on when they wobble.

In 2023 I took Ceri Hand’s Mastering Mentoring course, and this has enabled me to turn my gifts into a business idea.

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.

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. I charge £80 per hour for meetings and if an expanded package including emails and voice notes would suit you we can work out a bespoke package for you.

How shall we begin? Complete this registration form so I can get to know you. I encourage you to get to know me through my mentoring-related Instagram account here, Artistic Mystic and subscribe to my Substack, Joy Development. You are welcome to have a free no-strings informal chat with me. For our informal chat, and all other appointments, please book-in below.

One way for us to start working together is on my package for writing artist statements. I have a gift for listening to artists and catching what matters, hearing what an artist is saying, that they don’t hear themselves. I’ll make notes, we’ll edit together, we repeat the process with ample space for reflection. Over 3 x 30mins sessions online I believe we can come up with something you love. The total cost these 3 sessions is £150.

TESTIMONIALS

I had a 1-hour session with Allie which was so helpful in assisting both my big-picture thinking (I can get a bit caught in the details!) and helping me to reconnect with (and own) my values in relation to my practice and aims for the future. The session made me reassess and rewrite my artist statement and give me some much-needed energy around applications. I’ll be coming back for more!
Libby Scarlett

I’m so glad that I discovered Allies mentoring sessions in the resources section of a.n. The whole experience was positive and enlightening. I felt like my ideas and processes were reorganised into something tangible and concise. For writing statements it’s been transformative.
Jane Shanks, artist

Allie opened up new pathways for me – lots of prompts about how to push the work forward, other artists work to look at for inspiration, and how to turn limitations into possibilities. This was thoughtful and astute mentoring for my DYCP.
Liz Hall, artist

Artist statements. Why artists need them? How to write them? What they should include? It takes a lot of time and emotional digging to write a true statement. I have never felt mine has been truly right. So when @kateenters recommended @alliejcarr @artistic_mystic_allie I booked on to her three 30 minutes sessions over three weeks and what an amazing process. Allie works collaboratively with you to really understand your Artist DNA and the scaffolding that is needed to write a statement. We dug deep. Allie has the amazing skill of leading you to uncover what really motivates you to create your Art. Today was my last session and having taken the time between sessions to process and reflect on the writing I felt like I hit gold. I can’t wait to share my new statement with you. I left the session so inspired and proud of who I am as an artist and ready to make a new body of work. I 100% recommend you check out Allie if you need someone to guide you and ignite you to connect with who you are.
Jo Mitchell Long, artist

DISCOUNT OFFERS

I am so grateful for all the people I work with, I want to share discounts with those of you who support my work. I’d like to offer:

£10 discount for one mentoring session for mentees who have worked with me on the Artist Statement Writing package and would like to book for an hour mentoring sessions

£10 discount for one mentoring session per new client referral

2022

*Sacred / Secular Womb (hand on chest)*
Watercolour on A4 watercolour 300gsm paper

*Sacred / Secular Heart (arm out)*
Watercolour on A4 watercolour 300gsm paper

2023

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.

Night World & The Night

Sep 202022

I have a show open at Exchange Place Studios, Sheffield City Centre, Sheffield S2 5TR

Night World
10th September – 8th October 2022

Tuesday – Thursday: 10am – 4pm
Saturday: 12pm-5pm

Alison J Carr presents Night World, an exhibition of new works on paper. With an incisive precision and tight focus on showgirls, Carr reconsiders the potential of the night. Her collages and traced paintings indulge in the unruly and often-obscured spectacles of nocturnal entertainment, celebrating the fancy, audacious, and salacious.

During the show, I will be doing a book reading event, launching The Night. After the reading I will be in conversation with Katherine Angel. Event free but booking essential, details here.

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

2010

2008

**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.

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.

2006

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

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.

*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, 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

**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

2014

Tap Performance-7292 72 — *Tap Performance for Gallery with Many Dancers*, 2014
Performance 4 mins
Three Act Structures, S1 Artspace, Sheffield

*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

Into the Spotlight, Bloc Projects

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.

Showgirl Manifesto Documentation

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.

Abingdon Studios Exhibition Documentation

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

Felicity Means Happiness / Beam the play Double Bill at Theatre Deli, Sheffield

Sep 082018

Double Bill afternoon with Beam the play and workshop

Monday 8^th October, 2pm-4.30pm

Refreshments provided, £10, this is a dementia friendly event

Theatre Delicatessen, 202 Eyre Street, Sheffield S1 4QZ

Space, Place, Action at Market Gallery/Temporary Contemporary, Huddersfield

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.

For A Burning Love, The Old Lock Up Gallery, Cromford

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

The Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality

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.

Lay of the Land, HOME, Manchester

Feb 122017

Photo credit courtesy of HOME, Manchester

I took part in an innovative panel discussion, a symposium created by Victoria Lucas, in January, at HOME in Manchester. You can watch the event here.

Shows of Sheffield

Sep 202014

At present I’m at Shows of Sheffield at Castle House most days, as part of Festival of the Mind. I’m presenting my cigarette cards and theatre flats and having some great conversations with the public!

Three Act Structure, S1 Artspace

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!

Hollywood Forever, SIA Gallery, 9th May 2014 – 25th May 2014

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

You Me You Me You Me

Feb 182014

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

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**

Showgirl Art #11

Jan 202013

An artwork inspired by comerce, consumerism, the glamour of cars and embodied by girls in catsuits performing a Busby Berkeley-esque kaledoscopic routine. Roman Vasseur’s Franchise

Showgirl Art #10

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.

Showgirl Art #9

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.

Showgirl Art #8

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.

Showgirl Art #7

Jun 172012

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.

Showgirl Art #6

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?

Showgirl Art #5

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

Showgirl Art #4

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 Hunter‘s 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.

Showgirl Art #3

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

https://vimeo.com/24829188

http://www.mocp.org/exhibitions/2007/01/larry_sultan.php

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/dec/17/larry-sultan-obituary

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders porn portraits

http://www.greenfield-sanders.com/bibliography/famed-lensman-tackles-porn

http://www.paolocurti.com/greenfield/greenfield.htm

Showgirl Art #2

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.

http://www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=9763

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2004/apr/25/art1

Showgirl Art #1

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.

The Subjectification of Leigh Ledare’s Mom

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

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.

Tuesday – Thursday: 10am – 4pmSaturday: 12pm-5pm

For a Burning Love

Tuesday – Thursday: 10am – 4pm
Saturday: 12pm-5pm