University Art Gallery

Other Lives

'... the creation of a work in which members of a community - as simultaneously viewer/spectator, audience, public and referential subject - will see and recognize themselves in the work, not so much in the sense of being critically implicated but of being affirmatively pictured or validated' (Monwon Kwon, 2004).

The exhibition 'Other Lives' is an investigation of portraiture via the medium of photography. Through this medium, each artist has made visible a segment of a community that was once hidden. The exhibition features works by Anne Ferran, Rebecca Hawkins, Peta Hill, Lauren O'Brien and Rosangela Renno.

The Rydalmere Vertical Series by Anne Ferran were created during her artist's residency at UWS-Hawkesbury in 1997 and were acquired by the University in 1999. Within this series Ferran uses the interior of the Female Orphan School Parramatta as a backdrop to replica clothing, which stand in for and recall the orphan's human presence. These works evoke the memory of the lives of the women who passed through this building as well as  suggesting the loss of their collective histories, since the lives of former occupants of such institutions during the 19th century were rarely recorded and therefore unknown. Through these images Ferran has created the orphans missing archive, via their faceless portraits.

The images by Lauren O'Brien are from the 2007 Rouse calendar she photographed in 2006 for Rainbow Visions, a gay and lesbian organisation in Newcastle. She has had a long standing relationship with the community in Newcastle from years of working as a entertainer in gay and straight venues. The images reflect the diversity of those who identify with this community, as well as being a celebration and affirmation of it.

Rebecca Hawkins's installation reflects upon the rapid changes in communications technology and how the domains of 'public' and 'private' are indistinguishable. The inference within this work is that anyone could become a headline in the news which is full of ordinary peoples lives, instantly captured and transmitted around the globe.

The photographs by Peta Hill were the result of a request by a stockman and Dhubbi clansman Hans McGreen, to document the aboriginal version of the history of the cattle industry in the Cape York Peninsula. Three generations of Aboriginal stockmen and their families were documented by Hill, whilst she herself was working as a jillaroo on a cattle station in far north Queensland.  

Rosangela Renno's Vulgo (alias) installation, was the culmination of a visiting fellowship of the artist at UWS-Nepean in 1999. These photographs originated from glass negatives in the Sao Paulo Penitentiary Archive, which were identification photographs of prisoners, taken between 1920 and 1940. Archives particularly interest this artist because they are stored testimonies and traces of a past that is kept locked and forgotten most of the time. Renno's photographs are recovered fragments from a decaying prison archive which highlight the gaps in memory and history of these prisoners.

Many of the photographs within this exhibition were collected by UWS during the 1990s, demonstrating an institution's promotion of equity of access and representation from within its own art collection.