In Repose

Last week I was eagerly looking forward to first Friday. I was going to stop by Julianna's opening at Vox Populi and then spend the night around Old City- I haven't done first Friday in a few months because it's been too damn cold. To very much of my dismay, I had an allergic reaction to a newly prescribed medicine (as if the pain from having my wisdom teeth coming in wasn't enough), and spent the night vomiting every 10 minutes (from 5-11pm) and wound up in the hospital. I'm already so worried about starting off on the wrong foot health wise into this semester (I have my surgery to get those wisdom teeth pulled next week, ouch), and now this.

Well, after a weekend of detox and recovery, I decided to make up for the lost time and go see the show at Moore, In Repose. It was the Anna Gaskell images that hyped me up about this show, and they did not disappoint. Along with 4 of her photos, was a film installation and 2 drawings. I was most pleased with the image to the side, which I think is from her series Wonder. It's always been ones of my favorites of hers- Last year I did a presentation on Gaskell and I could not find a copy of the image anywhere much bigger than just that, I even have the book that it's in and it's so tiny. So finally I got to see the real print in the gallery- it's huge! These images of hers that I admired from books were even more stunning and vivid before my eyes.

If you don't know anything about Anna Gaskell she is a contemporary photographer whose most recognizable work dealt with her interpretation of Alice in Wonderland. She takes the allegory and creates her own narrative within in. She has done this with other stories like Ophelia and Brothers Grimm. I've always been intrigued by the kind of lighting she creates in Wonder and Override (her Alice series)- I have no idea how she does it and it creates a surreal image. I'm pretty sure it's a lot to do with flash outdoors. I know nearly next to nothing about flash (or most artificial lighting, I stay away from studios)- but I'd like to tackle that soon.

Well, the In Repose show is worth checking out! Some other great prints there where by Rienke Dijkstra, Jenny Gage, Catherine Opie, Carolee Schneemann and everyone's favorite Cindy Sherman. It was a really great female exhibit- I normally feel that when viewing a show similar to this, sometimes the work comes off trying to hard to be empowering and always seeming to have the opposite effect and/or appearing contrived. The different opinions and ways to exhibit various view on women's issues (even the typical ones, like body image)- didn't at all come off cliche. I tthoroughly enjoyed it.