Femmes & Hommes

the figure in contemporary art

Rebecca Agnew, Liam Benson, Julie Fragar, Rodney Glick, Lucas Grogan, Jack Hamilton, Matthew Hopkins, Laresa Kosloff and Luke Roberts

John Buckley Gallery Prahran - 114 Bendigo St Prahran

May 20 - June 11 2011

Curated by Jessie Bridgfoot

Femmes & Hommes - curated by Jessie Bridgfoot

I see a nipple, but no bucket...

At University, life drawing class was excruciating. I’ll never forget the initial moments of my first class. Willow charcoal poised, my hand clammy with anticipation, I had decided I would be cruel, that like Lucien Freud I would not romanticise the figure but describe it with brutal honesty. I waited as the life model emerged from behind a screen. She was everything I had hoped for, voluptuous, milky skin, big black hair and red lipstick. She dropped her satin gown and ascended the platform amidst the circle of easels. Suddenly, the strangest thing happened. The drawing lecturer began to drag and pile ghastly objects around the naked beauty. Perfectly plump buttocks were obscured by raw two by four planks. The curve of a shoulder laced with wispy chocolate hair gave way to a snagged dirty green plastic bucket. Botticelli breasts were rudely fragmented by the splattered rungs of a painter’s ladder. A Rapunzel-esque fortress built from the skip had rapidly grown around the model.

‘Now’ the tutor instructed ‘you have 40 minutes with this pose – commence!’ Flabbergasted I began my mark making. Beginning with her toes I followed the line of her generous calf up the back of her thigh, peering around the obscuring objects to continue the line of her leg. With staccato taps of my charcoal, I was defining the dimply marks of the left buttock cheek, when a red laser light appeared like a sniper’s target on my paper. ‘You’ a voice commanded ‘You are not being honest are you?’ Well, that was a pretty loaded question, I thought. She continued, shrilly ‘Where is the bucket??’ The red laser dot settled on the nape of the neck within my drawing. I looked at the model and then back at my sketch. My half detailed figure floated in the middle of the page adrift of all her trimmings and trappings. The sniper continued ‘You must always be honest. You cannot simply draw the figure, you must draw the figure in relation to its environment. You can’t edit what is in front of you to suit yourself - you must tell the truth. I see a head but no ladder in front, I see a foot but no crate to support it, I see a nipple but no bucket! You need to describe the relationship between the leg and the plank of wood, the dialogue between the breasts and the bucket’.

Begrudgingly I relented and succumbed to the wood and plastic. After three years working in that classroom, I realised what she was on about: context. The figure has no context, no story – without its environment. Perhaps this is also a lesson about the principles of drawing but the point was, the figure was nonsensical without a reference point – even if it was a bunch of old wood and broken buckets.

Working in a commercial gallery I often get asked for paintings ‘with a figure in it’. I was pondering the presence of the figure in contemporary art, as I climbed through the latest architectural intervention at a contemporary art centre. Later, at another exhibition, I found myself shuffling around a carefully considered sculptural milieu of human detritus, in a scene reminiscent of those drawing classes full of bottles, bags, chairs, clothes. I realised that the figure is here; its existence is all around. Artists have never shaken off the figure and, its absence is just as important as its presence. Perhaps to bring something new to a subject celebrated by artists for epochs, it’s braver to depict the figure itself.

This exhibition surveys the way in which contemporary artists use the figure in a contemporary context giving new relevance to a subject that has been used for centuries. The work of these artists draws from art historical commentary, religious iconography, primitive art and celebrity culture.

Jessie Bridgfoot 2011

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