Artists' self portraits in Australia
Tracey Moffatt's pristine and relatively small photographic self portrait ( 1999) was a highlight of the recent and fascinating University of Queensland Art Museum's inaugural exhibition 'To Look Within. Self Portraits in Australia'. 1 Posed with assurance as a photojournalist, Moffatt, with dark polished nails, is conservatively dressed in '50s or '60s gear, her accessories generic-style metal earrings and a green bracelet; an old fashioned Pentax camera is slung around her neck, an analogue watch on her arm. Whilst a blurred austere landscape of nowhere in particular stretches behind her, Moffatt's clothing points to a time that is equally unspecific.2 Like some visionary she gazes fixedly toward a horizon clearly visible on her glasses and mimicked as well in the camera's lens. But these doubled opaque lenses of glasses and equipment, on which a self consciously different landscape is marked, means that like her vintage clothes we only see what is represented or mirrored second hand. Only through this nomadic traveller artist cum seer, who represents on our behalf, can we ourselves see what she sees.
Richard Brilliant says of self-portraits that they are the manifesto of an artist's introspection.3 But is this always so? Can an artist's attention to their outer appearance be equally interesting? Many images collected together for this exhibition show a self conscious use of dress, as much to expose the artist's identity and aspirations as to mask it. So what can a reading of the clothing in these works tell us about the process of self-imaging, for some are demonstrably theatrical, others self-effacing, but all seemingly carefully calculated. Moving through the exhibition one could tread a path from Fredrick McCubbin's 1886 dandy-like self... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline