DISCOVERING YVONNE TODD PHOTOGRAPHY
Posted on 28. Mar, 2009 by ART BATTERY GROUP in THE ART HEADS SPEAK OUT
New Zealand photographer Yvonne Todd got her training in commercial photography. Her work draws heavily on its techniques and genres of particularly portrait, product and scenic photographies. While commercial photographers are trained to make things look perfect, to promote a fantasy-of-reality, Todd’s images are always not-quite-right. Her images cue us for the fantasy, but deliberately fall short of the commercial ideal. As Megan Dunn explains, ‘Todd avoids the hackneyed sentiments of the fantasist and the drudgery of the unmitigated realist, instead amalgamating the two to form a unique oeuvre at once erotic, nostalgic and deeply effecting.’ Women are Todd’s key subject. Her oeuvre is overrun with female characters: damaged, gawky, misfit, variously hobbled or proud. All seem to exemplify some physical, psychological or sociological malaise, implicit or explicit. Todd describes her cast as a ‘rainbow of affliction’, stressing an oddly utopian underside to their collective or cumulative condition. Our show – Blood, In Its Various Forms (incorporating Meat & Liquor) – includes works from Todd’s three recent series (Vagrants’ Reception Centre; Blood, In It’s Various Forms; and Meat & Liquor) plus new works.
PIPE STUDY
lightjet print, 158 x 121 cm, edition of 3 + 1 ap
FOUNDING CEO
lightjet print, 130 x 103 cm, edition of 3 + 1 ap