2005
My recent work for Midsumma festival examines the lesbian gaze in a culture where women are taught to be looked at rather than to look. In the piece Just Looking, there are three women, two dressed in drag, one woman dressed in a fancy frock at the top of the stairs. The image cuts her off from the neck up. Whilst initially this appears to support the dominant paradigm in our public sphere of mindless women being an object to be looked at, in the lipstick mirror she holds in her hand we see her defiantly staring at the viewer, attempting to subvert the onlookers gaze and the dominant paradigm. The second piece, Girls Just Wanna, depicts a scene where all the women hold the typically 'masculine' gaze. Most of the women in the image are actively looking at eachother, and none are submissive to eachother's stare.