This is the first major retrospective of the work of the internationally acclaimed Australian photo-artist Polixeni Papapetrou. Papapetrou has always been interested in the idea of acquired personas, of dressing up and reinventing the self. Initially her visual explorations concentrated on the liminal reaches of the adult world: Elvis Presley impersonators, body builders and drag queens. This exhibition focuses on a series of highly evolved bodies of work created in collaboration with her children, Olympia and Solomon, and their friends.… Continued
Sydney
Works from Dreamchild are included in the exhibtion Beyond Real.
Polixeni Papapetrou explores historical tastes and ideas through present-day games of dress-ups with her daughter, Olympia. Here the tableau becomes a theatre of possibility in a game of What-If? as different genders, races, historical stereotypes and characters from fiction are briefly tried on for size. It is a true collaboration in the sense that neither participant knows the full story.… Continued
In the circus sideshow, spectacles were hidden from view and enclosed in tents. From the 1840s until the 1940s, sideshows would travel from town to town and peddle human curiosities. Biological oddities, ethnological case studies and novelty acts were toured as exhibition displays. Placed on podiums within the sideshow tent, they dramatized the seductive pull of the exotic and the other.The… Continued