"Visual pleasure" exhibition by Dawn Woolley is opening on July 19, Thursday 5 p.m. at Prospektas gallery (Gedimino ave. 43, Vilnius).

My artistic practice encompasses photography, video, installation and performance. I use photographs of objects and people to question issues of artificiality and idealisation.

My artwork forms an enquiry into the act of looking and being looked at. Referring to psychoanalysis, phenomenology and feminism I examine my own experience of becoming an object of sight and also consider the experience the viewer has when looking at me as a female, and a photographic object. Voyeurism and exhibitionism intertwine as I attempt to disrupt relationships of power in purposefully provocative scenes.

The Substitute Series 2007-8

Primarily my artwork is self-portraiture, but not in the traditional sense. In the work I create a photographic copy of myself and place it in the real world instead of me. She becomes a substitute and my visual representative. By producing artwork that establishes me as an object it could be argued that I produce images that reinforce stereotypical images of the female body, but by depicting my body as an object I am able to suggest my presence while confirming my absence. With apparent exhibitionism I create a substitute that renders my real body invisible. There is a suspension of disbelief taking place in the viewing public, as they want to see image and body simultaneously. The overtly sexual nature of the body compels the viewer into the position of voyeur, only to reveal itself as an inanimate object. This wilful delusion is inherent to the medium of photography – the desire to look at a 2-dimensional photograph and believe in the integrity of the 3-dimensional objects that are suggested by the surface.

Interloper Series 2008-9

My work is increasingly concerned with the experience of the viewer and I attempt to define a direct relationship between the cut-out and the person looking at it. Using digital video or photography I create the illusion of a domestic scene in which my cut-out becomes a substitute for me. Rather than depicting an encounter between a man and a cut-out woman, I have attempted to create a direct relationship between the cut-out and the spectator. The overtly sexual nature of the body compels the viewer into the position of voyeur, only to reveal itself as an inanimate object. I aim to prolong the suspension of disbelief so the disjuncture between the presence and absence of the body is more pronounced. By creating photographs that are ambiguous I hope to further explore the relationship the photographic image has to the animate object. By making cut-outs that appear lifeless I attempt to integrate them seamlessly into the real world that surrounds them and play on the notion of the animated photographic subject.

Visual Pleasure 2009-10

In this series I examine the artificiality of femininity, and the strategies we employ to create the illusion of sexuality. In the photographs the female character is not a simulacra - but the construction of her as an idealised woman renders her artificial. During the shoot I arrange myself on a stage with cut-out furniture and attempt to hold them in place. I struggle to maintain the position I have allocated myself – that of the object of desire. On first reading these images appear to fall neatly into a patriarchal sexual language that Mulvey describes, a construction of sexuality that reduces the female subject into a 2-dimensional representation. But the woman is isolated in a world of her own making – she has created the fantasy of body image in order to appeal to the male gaze. This is the female paradox – she is captive in the panopticon that she built up around herself.

Cut to the Measure of Desire 2010

Cut to the Measure of Desire is a series of performance installations that respond to feminism and spectatorship theories; the panopticon overseer and the resulting state of perpetual exhibitionism. Using the language of symbolism in Dutch Bordeeltjes painting I create scenes of excessive sexuality. Like the Flemish genre paintings, each gesture and prop is carefully chosen to symbolise promiscuity, commerce and desire. Reminiscent of the traditions of still-life painting and the tableau-vivant, I pose within the scene - an imperfect being concealed within a 2-dimensional idealised world. The aim to uphold the illusion of perfection is futile and the codes of desire crumble under the weight of the spectators gaze.

BIOGRAPHY

Dawn Woolley trained as a fine art printmaker at Manchester Metropolitan University. She received a first class undergraduate degree in 2001 and has since developed a photography-based practice that encompasses digital video, installation and performance as well as photo-based installations.

In 2008 she completed an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art and was awarded a prize for excellence by Land Securities and Art Source. In the spring of 2008 she undertook a three month studio residency at Cite des Arts in Paris.

Recent exhibitions have included; “Virtually Real” at The Blyth Gallery, London (2010), “Start Your Collection” at The London Art Fair (2009), “Fotomonth” in Krakow, Poland (2007) and solo exhibitions in South Square Gallery, Bradford (2009), The Lighthouse Art Centre in Wolverhampton (2006) and Warsaw Project Space in Manchester (2003). Her artwork is held in a number of private collections in the UK, The Center for Fine Art Photography in Colorado and in the Museum of Photographic Arts in Kiyosato, Japan.

Dawn Woolley currently lives and works in Cardiff, UK and is a photography lecturer at Bridgend College. She is co-director of the curatorial project Another Product, which she founded with James Moore in 2003.

The exhibition is on view till August 4th.