Stockroom Kyneton, project space
01 August / 01 November 2020

JOSEPHINE MEAD
Moving out of the Period of Heat & Rut.

To stare into the centre of the image. To stare into the centre of the self. To Move Out of the Period of Heat & Rut and then to be sucked in again. There is always a way out. I guess there is a cyclicality to all things. A cyclicality to leaving and to return and to find the self. A cyclicality to everything being flipped upside down. Staring down the barrel of the image — am I waiting for modes of renewal or for a moment of rebirth?

​"I created these photographs while undertaking the Cortex Frontal Residency in a small countryside village in Portugal last year. I was producing a predominately black and white series of photographs – working through modes of Surrealism and focusing on self-portraiture and still-life photography. I created these two images towards the end of the residency. I realised that they were just as much a self-portrait as the photographs I had taken of my face during this time. I think there is a lot of room for slippage within an image – an image can never fully define something and the meaning of an image is never fully fixed. This notion also relates to the ongoing transformation of the self. The ambiguity of these images speaks to this feeling of indefinability – and of an ongoing search for a type of self-definition.

The show is titled, ‘Moving Out of the Period of Heat & Rut.’ - a reference to moving away from modes of pain and sadness in an effort to celebrate one’s own image.

I recently wrote a text that I turned into a voice recording with a sound score to accompany these two works. Through the text, I examine ideas of the power of a portrait – and by extension of an image and examine the level of ability I have to hold myself up – in the same way, that a portrait can hold the wall. I assess this sense of self-support while thinking through the ability to lose oneself in another’s image. I am examining the potential for immortalisation through photography and by extension through art-making and am wondering how much can be fixed within images and words. I am also commenting on the futility of these attempts. I am hoping to seek a point of resolute and unwavering definition despite these uncertainties, despite the problems of images and despite the ever-shifting nature of my mind. Ultimately I am wondering – through facing up to the image – can I move out of and remain away from Periods of Heat & Rut?"

Josephine Mead is a visual artist and writer. She works through photography, sculpture, installation and writing to explore personal notions of support. Her recent work has positioned her female family members as support structures, considered the body as a site of discursive practice and examined the temporal and sonic nature of writing and photography. She has exhibited widely in a range of solo and group exhibitions and has undertaken residency programs in Mexico (Arquetopia Foundation Residency, 2018), Kyneton (The Macfarlane Fund Residency, 2018) Turkey (Tasarim Bakkali TAB Residency, 2019), Portugal (Cortex Frontal Residency, 2019) and Berlin (ZK/U Residency at Zentrum fur Kunst und Urbanistik, 2020).

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