Title

Impossible gaze.

Venues

UTS Gallery (2002 – 26 July 2002)

Date

(2002)

Summary

Single-artist exhibition. Located: Australia (NSW). Photographs

Country of context

Australia

Abstract

A new exhibition Impossible Gaze, at the University of Technology, Sydney Gallery features sumptuous colour photographs by Jo-Anne Duggan, that reflect the combined subjects of Italy, museums, viewing, the Renaissance and photography itself.

Duggan's images mirror the gaze of the viewer in the opulent environment of Florentine museums, photographed in the galleries of Palazzo Pitti, Museo Nazionale del Bargello and the Galleria degli Uffizi.

According to Duggan these grand architectural spaces now serve as public museums after four centuries of reconstruction, renovation and redecoration. Renaissance art is seen/found/viewed amongst Medieval and Mannerist works. Early Renaissance, High Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic artworks, furniture and ornamentation all reflecting seventeenth to nineteenth century fashion and tastes.

"Impossible Gaze creates an intense visual experience," Duggan says. "It conjures the sensorial act of viewing. By seizing on fragments of objects and images layered with wall and ceiling decoration, the exhibition shifts the viewer's focus to the spaces in-between the historic artworks.

"The peripheral becomes the centre-piece. The fabric-covered walls, Baroque and Rococo frames, details from paintings - their surface texture and repairs - trace the histories of human hands. These decorated surfaces have the weight of the past inscribed in them.

Jo-Anne Duggan is a photomedia practitioner who has actively pursued her artistic career through a number of solo and group exhibitions and has work in both national and international collections. She has long been associated with the arts through various professional positions and through lecturing in photomedia practice and theory at the College of Fine Art and the University of Technology, Sydney.

Impossible Gaze is the final component of Duggan's Doctor of Creative Arts Degree at UTS. It is an interdisciplinary project that combines art practice and theoretical research.

The artist acknowledges the continuing support of the Italian Institute of Culture and Photo Technica, and the National Association for the Visual Arts and NSW Government Ministry for the Arts. [gallery media]