On the Periphery—Love, Desire and Power by Lennis Victoria

In this exhibition, Fall from Grace—Act 1: Describing Desire, American-born and New Zealand-domiciled photographer Julie Linowes presents seductive images that are manifestations of her subconscious framed in surreal settings. Linowes spent eight years immersed in film, completing a Master of Fine Arts Degree in film from the University of Southern California, School of Cinema-Television in Los Angeles. She is currently Director of the Master Of Fine Arts degree and Chair of the Photography, Film, & Video Department at Whitecliffe College of Arts & Design in Auckland, New Zealand.

Linowes’ inspiration comes from paintings and readings especially psychoanalytic writings and the surrealist works of Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali, and Edvard Munch. She also readily aligns her work with the surrealist genre of the American photographer Francesca Woodman (1958-81) and the surrealist French photographers Claude Cahun and Dora Maar.

The seemingly unrelated props and objects in all of Linowes’ works are essential to the narrative and reveal a reality beyond the banal. The formal compositional elements belie the subversive nature of these disturbing and haunting composite exposures. Linowes is the subject in all the works presented and we are invited to participate in the narrative and collaborate in this invitation to be simultaneously both repelled by the sheer radiance of the bizarre colors but to desire the power she conveys. The depiction of self is an autobiographical act and Linowes has the courage to frame herself caught in intricate webs of desire whilst deconstructing the real in a transformative process. There is always the danger of depicting the narcissistic self in work where the artist's body is central to the final product, however, Linowes evades this issue and each of her images is a rebirth of the self rather than a series of repetitive self-representations.

The Beauty Rots Trilogy: Part 2, Serpent of Desire appears as one continuous image whereas it is made up of seven different images. Each of the large works comprise five to seven separate images. The sheer size of all the works, many of them up to 296cm in length, impels the viewer to journey into and past the velvety opulence of the fabrics, to peer beneath the bridal veil, to feel the gossamer wings and at the same time there is this compulsion to return the gaze of the subject. We know that her gaze is dual - does she see us or do we see her? Who is she seducing, herself or the viewer? When we engage with the objects of skull and apple in the Serpent of Desire the narrative gathers momentum and these historic symbols of death and rebirth, and temptation render a feeling of disquiet. There is no Garden of Eden, this Eve is not a lost, bewildered woman seeking redemption. The woman in these pictures is alone with her inanimate objects and props and we either partake of her offerings or turn our back on her desire.

The apples - rotten, ripe, half-eaten, glowing - can be read as metaphors for the temptations of universal desires and unrequited loves. In these works Linowes speaks of both the sacred and the profane; of the secular and the religious. The slivers of metaphors that are revealed through the transparencies and layers originate from within her body and collude with exterior forces. Her concerns are with the feminine, desire and power in a contemporary idiom, however, the elusive nature of her visual language is commensurate with the skill with which Linowes manipulates her camera to enable multiple readings of the final images. Her personal story is expressed as a universal story and the feminine object of desire is an erotic interpretation of that desire. The dichotomy between purity and the fear of where desire may lead can be read in the liminal figure who is both the photographer and the viewer, hovering on the thresholds of the margins in each of these works. Catherine Zegher in Inside the Visible, 1996, describes "a liminal space hovering between appearance and disappearance, opacity and transparency, centre and margins, inside and outside" in relation to the photography of Francesca Woodman. It is these notions of the liminal figure and a liminal space that aligns Linowes’ compositions with the surrealist effects she creates rather than a surrealist style. Bidden to enter and fearful of the invitation, the idea of the liminal is reinforced with the binary notions of concealment and exposure that informs the content of each of these works. Margaret Sundell in her essay Inside the Visible states: "Behind the search for self in Woodman's photographs, however, lies the insistent cultivation of liminal space."

Woodman, like Linowes, used her body as subject and there are parallels that can be drawn between Linowes’ stated intent "to explore that connective tissue which binds inner and outer worlds, sometimes translucent while at other times acting as a veil" and the interpretations of Woodman's works by de Zegher and Sundell in conjunction with the notion of the

The aesthetic of intangible beauty is inherent in each of the works in this exhibition. This beauty mollifies the somewhat macabre aspect of the mannequin parts; dismembered hands, incomplete torsos and disguised gender. The violence of the colours is reminiscent of mannerist paintings and yet Linowes manipulates the developing process to achieve an inventiveness that marks each piece as an entity that commands its own space and place as an original work of art in the sense of a painted canvas. The expressions of fantasy that have their roots in Linowes’ subconscious preclude precise explanations of her narratives. She empowers the spectator to satisfy their desire to unravel the ruptures and enigmas that confront them and delight in the tactile quality of her surfaces. 

The juxtaposition of apparently dissimilar objects (are they fetish?) is part of Linowes’ personal iconography that marks her territory and permits the viewer a tantalizing glimpse into her inner world. Whether Linowes is unsettling our view of the world or welcoming the voyeuristic gaze is a precarious balancing act that provokes us to check our sense of reality. Rosalind Krauss 1985 wrote that surrealist photography, "exploits the very special connection to reality with which all photography is endowed."

It is this special relationship that Linowes has worked at for the past twenty years and the works in this exhibition are testament to her maturity in the surrealist genre.

Linowes positions her work within a psychoanalytic framework. In Linowes’ explorations of her subconscious the theories of the Matrix and metamorphosis developed by painter and psychoanalyst Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger are apt concepts with which to identify "an-other femininity, an-otherness beyond the Phallus" as Ettinger so cogently writes in her paper Matrix and Metamorphosis 1992. I suggest that Linowes’ exposures of her feminine self are seeking to locate the psyche beyond an order that is comfortable, patriarchal and known, into the realm of "an-otherness" where a new order resides.

This new order is the disquiet that Linowes’ works generate because they tap into the secret and veiled territories that language may or may not be able to articulate, or indeed want to acknowledge. Therein lies the challenge for the viewer.

Linowes creates an ambivalence with titles that appear to be clues to the content, however, she incites the viewer by titillating the senses with her given words. 

The central figure in each work is alive and alone except for the objects of her conflicting desires. If these are Echoes whose voices are we hearing? Rot and Decomposing are redolent of death. Surrender and the Longing are emotions that imply confessions. Who is the "Other" that these words in the titles speak? Corsets and bound mannequins conjure visions of bondage and deviant sexual appetites. Grapes and apples, the fruits of desire, remind us of our mortality as we witness Linowes’ Fall From Grace. The enigmatic titles are like the spirals of our dreams where there are no beginnings and no endings—the disparate collude to create the ethereal.

The innovative techniques Linowes has perfected in her art practice defy reproduction and are achieved through the combination of both infrared and negative and transparency films which she often cross-processes. The slow shutter speed creates the transparent effects. In both the shooting and processing of her film and prints she uses alternative techniques, which are unpredictable.

There is the uncanny presence and absence of the photographer because at the actual moment of the recording of the scene the photographer is absent from the viewfinder. Linowes revels in the surprise aspect of the final moments that insert her presence into the scene. It is virtually impossible for Julie Linowes to duplicate her final results. Even though she limits her editions to three within each edition each one of these is really an original source.

i. de Zegher, Catherine M. “Inside the Visible” in Inside the Visible an Elliptical Traverses of 20th Century Art or And from the Feminine. (1994). Catalogue. Boston: The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. p.35.

ii. Sundell, Margaret. Ibid. p.435.

iii. Krauss, Rosalind. “Photography in the Service of Surrealism” in Rosalind Krauss and Jane Livingston, L'Amour Fou: Photography and Surrealism. Washington DC & New York: the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Abbeville Press, 1985. p.35.