All of Sherman’s work is self-portraiture and I have always liked self-portraits. ‘The self-portraits of me have some element of interest in their composition that would project in the right way onto my body, but Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Cindy Sherman are important because of their influence on my life. I have never been motivated by making money but doing my own thing and creating my own treasures and I felt that the home for those work should primarily be Tūranga.’įrom the self-portraits in A Phantasmic Exposure of Self Through Art he says that a number of the artists that he references were influential on his life and practice but predominantly they were chosen because of their potential to be integrated within the structure and composition of his figure in the images. Here is me and I knew that I had all day and everyday to do this and when I was finished I would give it to the city. I realised I was the only person who had the experience and time to make a body of work like that. ![]() ‘I realised what I was seeing was the city through the people and the people through the city. More recently Ross also gained public attention for the gifting of a decade of his photographs from 2010, the Doc Ross Photographic Archive of places and people in Christchurch to Tūranga and, as a by-product of that decision, to the National Library. I am the one in control of it and it is liberating. I am going to be my own curator and curate things in my own life. ‘I am ever evolving with my processes and ideas. More recently, Ross’ photography has also a tendency to explore new subjects and methodologies. At my point in time, this is me exposing myself and it is a combination of those things that made the show.’ When students tell me that they are having their first show, they are exposing themselves. I remember being really young and having my first solo exhibitions. I do not care about my body anymore or that I am old. I now “uncare” a lot less than when I was twenty. Ross also maintains that now he is 66 years old, ‘you do not care at that age. If Jon Coplans could do it why couldn’t I? It was because of the encouragement of Roger Boyce that I did the exhibition. ‘I saw them in London at The Tate and thought that I would like to do something like that myself. ‘ He did an exhibition of himself large and naked in the 1970s in photographs in the tradition of influential American photographer Edward Weston (1886 – 1958). Where does Ross’ A Phantasmic Exposure of Self Through Art have its origin? Ross traces it back to an exhibition he had seen of self-portrait nudes by curator, museum director and photographer, John Coplans (1920 – 2003). ![]() Painter and academic Roger Boyce described Ross’ self-portraits as a ‘photographically taxidermic record of his own temporarily-illuminated skin.’ Laying portraits of famous artists over images of himself the combination was something far greater and compelling that the sum of its parts. Doc Ross’ recent exhibition at Chambers Gallery of a self-portraits was like no other series of photographs by the artist.
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