We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art stands and recognise the creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country.
Julie RrapPuberty (from ‘Persona and shadow’ series) unknown date
On Display: Regional Touring Exhibition
Performance and critique are central to Julie Rrap’s practice. She uses her own form to question rather than to depict her subjective identity.
I see myself as talking from the third person, not as a self-portrait . . . I use my self-image in a more disembodied way. I am having a conversation with the female body: I am in two positions at once as model and author. The use of the self is almost like a ruse.1
Puberty 1984 is one of a series of nine large-scale photographs that Rrap began after she travelled to Europe in the 1980s, where renowned Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s work was attracting renewed interest. Disquieted by Munch’s depictions of women, and confounded by the dearth of women artists included in European exhibitions of contemporary art, she restaged his paintings using herself as subject, photographing, collaging and hand-colouring the images before re-photographing them.
In Puberty, Rrap assumes the same pose as a vulnerable young woman in Munch’s painting – made a century earlier – and reframes the underlying power dynamic through casting herself as both artist and subject, regarding the viewer with a direct gaze in an overt challenge to age-old stereotypes. Unlike Munch’s painted original, Rrap’s version of the female figure stares defiantly out, at the viewer, asserting her role as the author of her own persona, as cultural producer.
Endnotes:
Julie Rrap / Australia QLD b.1950 / Puberty (from ‘Persona and shadow’ series) 1984, printed 1991 / Cibachrome photograph on paper / 198 x 122.2cm / Purchased 1991 / © Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Julie Rrap is a significant contemporary Australian artist whose work often critiques modern and contemporary art. As a performance artist, Rrap uses her body as a subject through which to present oppositional viewpoints, including feminist readings of western art and philosophy.
Photography and video were used by the artist to document her early performance works. Her practice has continued to be centred around performance, producing durational video works and multiples composed through photography and sculpture.
Rrap makes body sculpture through moulds and impressions of herself. She views body sculpture as distinct from figurative sculpture, which is associated with artistic depictions of the human figure as separate from an artist’s own body. The artist’s use of her body in the art making process invites audiences to contemplate her capacity for endurance when holding poses whilst moulds set, as well as her dual strength and vulnerability when maintaining her gaze whilst looking into a camera lens.