Mirrors, selfies and the female gaze and The Altered Insular: Claude Cahun in Jersey

Mirrors, selfies and the female gaze
The female gaze remains undefined and so poses an exciting opportunity, which Lyndal Walker will discuss as she introduces her recent work. Mirrors have played a part in her work since the 1990s and she will discuss how they now serve to expose the viewer and raise questions about the nature of truth. Walker’s work often refers to popular photography and she will discuss selfies and the way they also interplay with the history of feminist photography. Female sexuality and the pleasures of looking and posing will also be addressed in her presentation.

LYNDAL WALKER
Berlin based artist, Lyndal Walker has a career in installation and photography spanning twenty years. In 2017 she had solo exhibitions at Berlin’s Künstlerhaus Bethanien, where she was a resident, and Hangmen Projects in Stockholm. Her work was recently exhibited in Unfinished Business at The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

The Altered Insular: Claude Cahun in Jersey
Since the posthumous rediscovery of her photographs in the 1980s Claude Cahun (1894-1954) has acquired cult status among artists dealing with issues of gender, identity and self-representation. Cahun is best known for the radical self-portraits she produced, in collaboration with her partner Marcel Moore, against a backdrop of the 1920s Parisian avant-garde. In 1937 the pair moved to the Channel Island of Jersey, attempting to escape the threat of Nazism (Cahun’s family were Jewish). Here the island’s coast and landscape were assimilated into a private archive of photographs figuring Cahun in a compelling mix of overtly performative and vernacular modes and contexts. After Moore’s death in 1972, her estate, including the photographs, was sold at a local auction house. Many of the photographs were later acquired by Jersey Archive where the largest collection of Cahun works is preserved today. In this talk Gareth Syvret draws upon the Cahun archive and those of other Jersey photographers to place her work in context, within the island’s landscape and cultural history. The dissemination of the Cahun archive has had a significant impact on the international art scene and has drawn artists and researchers to Jersey to view and respond to her photographs. Gareth will discuss this impact in relation to the current CCP exhibition Entre Nous: Claude Cahun and Clare Rae and consider the wider role and value of photographic archives in contemporary practice.

GARETH SYVRET
Gareth Syvret is Photographic Archivist at the Société Jersiaise, St Helier, Jersey, UK. He researches photographic history in island cultures and curates photography exhibitions that connect contemporary practice with photographic archives. In 2011 he founded Archisle: The Jersey Contemporary Photography Programme, which seeks to engage current practitioners in archival research for source material; instigating collaborative partnerships between artist and archivist in the production of new photographs, writing and curatorship.

Following these discussions Clare Rae’s book Never standing on two feet (Perimeter Editions) will be launched. Clare will be signing copies and refreshments will be available.