Between Worlds

Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale

6 March - 18 April 2010

Education Resource

Polixeni Papapetrou

This education resource has been designed as a starting point for students to interpret the work of Polixeni Papapetrou in

her exhibition Between Worlds.

The resource includes information on the artist and exhibition, suggested discussion points and practical

activities.

Engaging with these artworks promotes learning within VELS Domains of the Arts, English, Communication, Design,

Creativity and Technology and Thinking as well as study areas of VCE Art and Studio Art.

Contents

Artist Statement 4 List of Works 5

Artist Biography 6

Links 6

Discussion Points 8

Activities 10

In Between Worlds, I have photographed children acting as animals in the landscape. I see children as being between worlds: between the world of infancy and adulthood.

In these photographs the children wear animal masks, which lets them inhabit an intermediary position that separates children from adults and human from animal. The photographs are both familiar and unfamiliar: we immediately recognize the subjects as children yet they uncannily present as animals. Beneath the mask that asserts the presence of a horse or pig, the child’s image is both present and absent, tangible and intangible.

Though in a sense absurdist, I have presented the children as animals because children seem to have a magical affinity with animals and I see parallels in their worlds. It isn’t a physical proximity to the farm or anything like that. Children meet up with animals through fiction and fantasy, from cuddly toys to animations, to the great stories of Lewis Carroll. Animals enter our consciousness in mysterious ways and we look at them in order to understand ourselves and our emotional realm. For most of the history of philosophy, it is what we don’t share with animals that defines

us as human. In a similar way, children are the Other that defines adulthood; and for that reason, children pervade our consciousness, at times adorably and at times threateningly.

I am interested in the types of boundary-crossing that can happen in photography, where the children have the power to make other worlds in their imagination. They can dream up alternative worlds, but also reflect sardonically upon the one they share with adults. In dressing up and wearing masks, the children, like actors, perform identities other than their own. In sumptuous landscapes on the border of sea and land, forest and plain, land and air, the children as animals dance upon their own liminal world between fantasy and theatre, mythology and reality, archetype and free play, male and female, child and adult and of course animal and human.

In some works I have referenced historical art works such as Caspar David Friedrich’s The Wanderer, Jean François Millet’s The Gleaners, Holbein’s The Ambassadors and Whistler’s The Artist’s Mother (which ironically becomes a portrait of my child in this case) as well as my earlier masked series, Phantomwise.

Many of the landscapes I selected are portentous—as if at the edge of a space or the end of an epoch—conveying some of the wonder that children might entertain in entering the animal kingdom. As beasts, however, they have some of the archetypal quality of animals in narrative, perhaps pretentious authorities, as in Alice in Wonderland, perhaps august figures from history, from a play or a film.

The work has a comic dimension, as children take on an image of the animal as charismatic human.

The children appear as something we immediately recognize, but fantastically hybridized. They have lost their child identity and have adopted sublime identities borrowed on the terms of the mask. Within these ambiguities, I fathom the space that children occupy in our understanding and wonder how they might bestride the stage of art.

Polixeni Papapetrou, 2010 (with Robert Nelson)

Between Worlds

List of works

The Loners The Debutants The Provider The Harvesters The Reader

The Watcher

The Players The Ambassadors The Sand TravellerThe Pastoralist The Digger

The WandererThe Caretaker

All works 2009Edition of 8Pigment ink prints on Harman paper105 x 105 cm

LinksArtist Diane Arbus

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Jean-Francois Millet

Caspar David Friedrich

Hans Holbien

James McNeill Whistler

Cindy Sherman

William Eggelston

Sally Mann

Charles Dodgson (Lewis Caroll)

Julia Margaret Cameron

The Brothers Grimm

Web polixenipapapetrou.net

www.nelliecastangallery.com

www.stillsgallery.com.au

Polixeni PapapetrouPolixeni Papapetrou is a Melbourne born photographer. Papapetrou studied photography part time at RMIT whilst working as a lawyer, leaving law in 2001 to concentrate on her evolving artistic practice. In 2007 she graduated from Monash University with a PhD in Fine Art.

Papapetrou’s interest in photography began in the 1980s, exploring themes of personal identity as expressed through dress up and performance. Earlier subjects included Elvis and Marilyn fans, drag queens and body builders.

Further inspired by the birth of her own children, Papapetrou explored representations of childhood in more depth. Phantomwise (2002) re-enacted 19th century masks and dress ups, transforming the appearance of Papapetrou’s daughter. Dream Child (2003) and Wonderland (2004) examined imagination and play drawing on the writings of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Caroll). Later work Haunted Country (2006), saw a move into the natural world with images of children lost in the Australian landscape, based on historical records of child disappearances. Games of Consequence (2008) drew parallels between memories of play from Papapertou’s own childhood to that of her children’s experiences today.

Works by Papapetrou are exhibited widely across regional and metropolitan Australia and overseas. Her work can be found in public and private collections around Australia and the United States.

Papapetrou currently lives and works in Melbourne.

Junior

• Describe what you see in these works.Where are the photographs taken?Who are the photographs of?

• When was the last time you dressed up?What was the occasion?How did you feel acting as someone else?

• Look at the animals used in Papapetrou’sphotographs. What personalities do we think of with these animals? Does this match with what the characters are doing?

• If you could be half animal, half human, whatanimal would you choose, and which halves?

• Do you recognise any of the images?Can you find any fairy tale stories?

• What is the best part about being a child?Do you think you will still enjoy this when you are an adult?

• Ask a parent or grandparent about theirchildhood. How is it different to yours?

• Why might Papapetrou have asked childrenshe knew to pose in her photos?

• Imagine there is a thought bubble comingout from the photograph. What might the subject be thinking?

Discussion Points

• What is your first reaction to Between Worlds?

• Look at the composition of Papapetrou’s photographs. Comment on the use of Art elements and principles to create the works. Why is scale important?Describe the process used to create them.

• Analyse the use of the exhibition space for Between Worlds.Would you have set the exhibition up differently?

• What themes can you find in Papapetrou’s photographs?

• When was the last time you dressed up?What was the occasion?How did disguise change your personality?

• How do the characteristics of the animals represented add to theimages interpretation? Reference one of Papapetrou’s works in discussing this.

• What evidence in the artworks reflect personal aspects ofPapapetrou’s life?

• What is the context of the artwork? How have the time and place influenced the works?

• Interpret the use of symbols in Papapetrou’s work.

• Have contemporary ideas and issues influenced these works?Have Postmodern elements of appropriation, parody, irony and satire been used?

• What is the relationship between the title and the image? Does the title change the interpretation?

• What if we were to take a part of the image away?What effect would this have on the interpretation of the artwork?What could you add in its place?

• What is 19th century ‘tableaux’ in relation to photography?How is this influence visible in Papapetrou’s work?

• ‘Transitional places in ones life are often the most creative’ - Susan Bright, catalogue essay, Between Worlds.Can you think of a transitional period in you life?What transitional period is Between Worlds addressing?

• Papapetrou refers to historical artworks in Between Worlds:Caspar David Friedrich’s The Wanderer,Jean Francios Millet’s The Gleaners,Holbiens The Ambassadors,Whistler’s The Artist’s Mother.Select one of these to compare and contrast with Papapetrou’s related work.

• Why is there some anxiety surrounding the photography ofchildren? What are the main opinions to this debate? Is this relevant to Between Worlds?

• Read Natalie King’s article on Between Worlds.What are the main points to her review of the exhibition.

Senior

Senior

• Papapetrou views lighting as one of theimportant elements in staging her works. Experiment with lighting effects on one of your own photographic compositions.How do lighting changes affect the image?

• Restage your favourite painting as aphotograph.

• Design a mask to use as disguise.Stage environments for your character to inhabit.

• How do you feel when in disguise?Is there a way you could record that feeling?

• Read Robert Nelson’s On Between Worldsin the catalogue. How might this change your interpretation of the work?Choose an artwork to compose your own verse.

• Write your own review of Between Worlds.

Junior

• What animal are you most like?What traits do you share?Draw yourself as a part animal, part person.

• Create your own animal mask.Have your picture taken acting as your character.

• Make up a class dress up box. Add in costumes and props from home and masks that you have made.Use these and your school grounds to stage your own Polixeni Papapetrou inspired photographs.

• What is your favourite fairy tale?Dress up as one of the characters and role play part of the story.

• Choose one of Papapetrou’s photographs towrite a story or poem about. What might the character be feeling?Where are they?What are they doing?

Activities

Image Credits

Front CoverThe Wanderer

Page 2The Ambassadors

Page 7The Loners(detail)

Page 8The Harvesters

Page 10The Reader

Page 12The Caretaker