anne zahalka
high anxiety
anne wallace
Annette Bezor's powerful contributions to this expansive group show are a series of paintings entitled Lookers, in which she continues her consideration of Tretchikoff and porn imagery, and Blush- two paintings exploring new territory. Tretchikoff prints, popular 1950s suburban decoration, epitomise Western culture 's objectification of the Asian 'other'. Electronically manipulating the images before rendering them on canvas, Bezor changes the character in the women's faces, subverting the original construction of gender, race and power. Lookers also includes images of the faces of women in pornography, again electronically manipulated, but excluding the body, the prime site of the pornographic gaze. Hung together, the porn and Tretchikoff faces muse provocatively on traditional depictions of women. Appropriation is a typically postmodern strategy, but the manipulation and replication of images is not new- the originals were visually manipulated and printed in numbers. In effect, they're re-appropriated. Bezor has produced several versions of each image, commenting on the concepts of authenticity, commodification, and the transmissibility of electronic imagery. Blush comprises two paintings of nudes, one an overwhelming 2.7 x 4.8 metres, the other a more domestically sized 67.5 x 120 cm. The model, reclining full-length, gazes at the viewer, in a manner similar to Manet's Olympia, but without the lush interior, servant with flowers, bedding, shoes, jewellery or cat-the props Manet used to characterise the subject and set the scene. Bezor's model is devoid of signifying apparel. There is no background- the white ground is marked only by shadows under the hands suggesting she lies on white cloth. Blush contrasts with Bezor's earlier work The Snake is Dead (1981), for example, where the naked model is posed in a lush picnic scene, full of