Samantha Everton Collected Works
This exhibition of collected works brings together key pieces from three bodies of work which share some common themes and ideas: Childhood Fears( 2007) Vintage Dolls (2009) and Marionettes (2011).
With Vintage Dolls, I was inspired by the innocent act of children playing dress ups and the way they re-enact adult behavior, concepts and themes, without preconceptions or judgment.
The images give physical reality to a child’s fantasy of adult life and discussion. I wanted to present a child’s perspective about adult subject matter, particularly race and culture, much of which came about because of the personal discovery of my own upbringing in a multicultural family.
While the pictures suggest a chance encounter between camera and the moment captured, the reality comes together because of the intricate choreography of imaginative concept, lighting, mood, costume, setting and artist. I spends endless days and months gathering all the elements needed to create these theatrical works; from finding a decrepit house that I could manipulate and semi-demolish, to costumes and props, to a living tree and a friend’s black cat.
Night Carnival depicts a poignant scene of difference and exclusion, as costumed girls playfully take the centre stage while a lone outsider watches silently from the wings. In Masquerade, two girls are frozen in a moment of play; the image has the formal stiffness of a Victorian era portrait, but one of the girls is looking out from the bird cage sitting over her head. She may be trapped by convention, or is it just one of the masks that we wear every day?
The house was by far the hardest prop to find. I spent weeks searching all across Melbourne for just the right place, to finally find a house a few streets from where I lived. Then I had to convince the owner to allow me to smash holes into the walls, strip wallpaper and carpet up and install a tree into the living room. The owner was very accommodating!
As with Vintage Dolls, and some of my earlier series of work, Marionettes accesses realms of the uncanny that I call “magic realism”, but the focus has shifted from that of the child’s, to ‘grown-up’ issues of isolation and loss of control, under the weight of daily life.
These works show women caught in moments of silent implosion. The pace, pressures and rigours of daily life have reached a crisis point.
In the image Blue Day a woman hangs, as if catatonically, from the picture-rail in her bedroom, as a little kingfisher observes helplessly. A dominant blue door lies open, or is it closing? In Birthday Wish a well dressed, white-stockinged young lady stands at a wooden table, arms dangling listlessly and face plonked into her ill-fated masterpiece, as a commanding white swan looks on in disbelief. In Party Time, a woman celebrates alone, with the canisters as her only audience, and the swan observing passively – or is it silently criticizing?
Although the Marionettes scenarios illuminate women’s sociological and psychological isolation, they also hint at something extraordinary in these captured moments of implosion. Whilst illustrating important and weighty themes, the images are made accessible by a pervading sense of situational comedy. The omnipresence of birds, both native and introduced, has symbolic import, heightening the surrealism of the narrative and providing a unifying element to the body of work. I love surrealism, pictures where there’s something extra, if you look a little closer.
Samantha Everton is represented by
Anthea Polson Art Queensland
http://www.antheapolsonart.com.au/
Art House Gallery Sydney
http://www.arthousegallery.com.au/current-exhibition.asp
Helen Gory Gallerie Melbourne
http://www.helengory.com/#/Home
