F UNCIONES DE LA PRENSA DE CALIDAD

Just as Jean Baudrillard argues modern society has lost sight of what is truth with the hyperreal becoming a substitute for reality, so to the aesthetic illusion in contemporary portraiture is suffused with new meanings. Baudrillard considers the simulacrum or simulation to be an abstraction of the real world which by its very form inaugurates the power of the illusion. He states:

Virtuality tends towards the perfect illusion. But it isn’t the same creative illusion as that of the image. It is a ‘recreating’ illusion (as well as a recreational one), revivalistic, realistic, mimetic,

hologrammatic. It abolishes the game of illusion by the perfection of the reproduction, in the virtual rendition of the real. And so we witness the extermination of the real by its double.221

Thus, the world is no more real than the images that represents it in mass media because as an illusion they bear no relation to reality. This culminates as a modern dilemma: either simulation is irreversible, as there is nothing beyond simulation other than the banality of everyday existence, or there is an art of simulation, an ironic quality that evokes the appearances of the world as a

221 _{Jean Baudrillard, “Objects, Images, and the Possibilities of Aesthetic Illusion”, ed. Nicholas} Zurbrugg, Jean Baudrillard,Art and Artefact (Brisbane: Institute of Modern Art, 1997): 9.

161 simulacrum. On the art of simulation, he says “ … representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as a false representation, simulation envelopes the whole edifice of the representation as itself a simulacrum”.222 _{He explains there}

are four successive phases in the shift from representation to simulation: the image reflects a basic reality; perverts the reality; masks the absence of reality and lastly achieves a hyperreality without origin.

From these remarks, we can begin to understand the significance of a world of simulations in mass media and visual culture in which hyperreality transcends reality. Despite the unremitting pessimism of many of the messages in his writings of the late twentieth century, Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality in which the image becomes more real than reality remains relevant in today’s techno-culture.

To further understand the concept of hyperreality, first I consider how digital photography can create, alter and present an image or portrait as a new

actuality. Digital images can traverse the truth, where the origin or authenticity of the image is no longer deemed important, relevant or even mandatory. While still photography as a medium became regarded as a mirror with a memory able to record faithful images of the human experience at a moment in time, discourse about photographic truth in the networked-digital age is obsolete. According to Helen Ennis, “claims for the death of the portrait are becoming insistent with the advent of digital imaging and the loss of faith in photographic truth”.223 _No

longer is the rhetorical indexical quality of the image, the physical presence at the moment of exposure, the core feature of digital photography. The

authenticity of the photographic image has always been under suspicion but no more resoundingly than with digital imaging which affords new possibilities of technical mastery and fictitious realism. As with Baudrillard’s four phases of simulation, if on one hand, the image is seen to imitate reality or resemble reality of what the viewer believes exists, then the image is likely to be regarded a truthful representation of the subject. If on the other hand, the image has been

222 _{Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulations”, Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, 170.} 223 _{Helen Ennis, Mirror with a Memory: Photographic Portraiture in Australia, 7.}

162 enhanced or altered to convey an illusion of truth, then what is represented becomes the reality, a hyperreality, that influences audience perceptions. Photographer Petrina Hicks brings together incongruous elements and creates a sense of polarity within one image. Her large scale photographs are both alluring and unsettling in their illusions of reality that have an underlying ambiguous message, with a hint of portent or something more subversive. She says:

I was always interested in photography how I could somehow try to correlate the polarity or difference between two opposing forces. I remember always trying to work out how I could achieve this within just one single photograph, whether it be a push-pull effect where you pull in one direction but it repels in another.224

Furthermore, by employing the visual language of advertising and consumerism in her illusory artistry, she probes and subverts stereotypes of femininity and the female form, with notions of perfection and imperfection in her work. For her, consumerism is about seduction that creates false promises of satisfaction in the minds of consumers. The paradox is desires or false promises are never quite realised which lures the consumer to want more and more of the same. Hicks explains her approach is simultaneously elusive and seductive. “So the images looked desirable on the surface, but I was aiming to corrupt this process of seduction. There are elements in my images that evoke desire and emotion, yet the images remain ambiguous because the signs to decode them are absent”.225

In doing so, Hicks leaves the viewer unsatisfied in their quest for greater meaning or truth behind her hyperreal images. She further explains:

The surface of the images is parading as commercial photographs, but the underlying ideas don’t allow for the images to be consumed as such. I’ve always been drawn to the idea of creating images that are beautiful and desirable on the surface, that draw people in … but then gently pulling the rug away, before they’ve realized it. These images promise satisfaction, but don’t deliver it in the

224 _{Interview with artist, Appendix Four, 337.}

163

expected way, the way we are conditioned to read commercial photographs.226

Considering how Hicks brings together these incongruous elements in her work, I argue she seeks to counteract the falsehoods of beauty and perfection

associated with consumerism and mass media in her photography by creating an ambiguous sub-text in which images of women and girls with animals, birds and objects are placed in strange juxtapositions. Her glossy, stylised photographs are disconcerting and enthralling in their ambiguity and duality: perfection and imperfection, beauty and the grotesque, familiarity and strangeness. In short, she singles out illusory devices of perfect pink roses, white lace face veils, soft pink jumpers, bunches of grapes and so forth, as false promises of over-saturated feminine symbolism to seduce audiences to the point of nausea.

This is evident in a recent work New Age (2013) (figure 54) that depicts the torso of a naked woman sitting on red fabric slung over a stool with a sash of blue draped behind her. In a pose reminiscent of an ancient marble statue, only her belly, thighs and her left arm are displayed. Indeed, this new age goddess can be compared to the Greek and Roman statues of Aphrodite and Venus as classical ideals of female beauty and sexuality. Such symbolism preoccupies the viewer’s eye which is drawn to a v-shaped white crystal placed in the woman’s groin that disturbs or ruptures the calm countenance of her soft pale flesh. Two eras are colliding here.

226 _{Ibid, Miller, 126.}

164

Figure 54: Petrina Hicks, New Age, 2013 Figure 55: Petrina Hicks, Venus, 2013

The enduring symbols of female form and fertility in art history—that is, Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde and Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus—are visible in Hicks composed sculptural forms. This is manifest in the crystals filling the origin of the world in figure 54, as well as the face of a young woman obscured by an enormous shell in Venus (2013) in figure 55. In ancient mythology, Venus was born upon a seashell and following on from this, the pink conch shell has long been a symbol of female fertility and sexuality. The way in which the shell overwhelms the girl’s face and masks her identity is a wry comment by Hicks on the over-representation of the female face and genitalia in mass media and popular culture today. She states, “Venus explores my own feelings of being overwhelmed by the over-sexualised and unrealistic images of women we are exposed to. Venus is my response to these images”.227

165 Figure 56: Petrina Hicks, Shenae and Jade, 2005

Figure 57: Petrina Hicks, Emily the Strange, 2011

In other examples of her illusory artistry, Hicks places children with animals and birds together in disharmony, thereby, creating a duality or a polarity. In the image of Shenae and Jade (2005) (figure 56), the viewer’s eyes are drawn to the budgerigar’s head in the girl’s mouth. Hicks places the girl and bird in a mise-en- scene, a visually artful surreal setting that is visually compelling, if not a little absurd. Instead of reassuring the audience that the budgie is not being harmed, the work elicits an uneasiness and sense of anticipated doom. She says:

You’re not instantly repulsed by it, so you can’t really tell the difference between what’s repulsive and what’s appealing or the duality between the potential violence of the image or is it just a beautiful image? The boundary between the two—the girl and the bird—as opposing forces is quite blurred as well. It’s a subtle polarity.228

To seduce the viewer, Hicks contrasts the disquiet of the budgie’s fate with the stillness of the girl who has her eyes closed, as though she is unaware of what she is doing. Hicks makes clear the budgie is not a real bird but a taxidermy budgie. She wrapped some cling wrap around the bird’s head so that the girl

166 would feel more at ease with the budgie in her mouth.229 _{The luminescent soft}

background and pale colouration of the girl’s complexion, hair and clothing throws the headless body of the brightly coloured yellow-green budgie into high relief. Hicks creates a simulacrum, a hyperreal image of improbable reality. Furthermore, in Emily the Strange (2011) (figure 57), Hicks again disrupts the usual beguiled response of the senses to a beautiful young girl in a pretty pale pink dress frilled with lace who is holding a pet cat, a hairless eerie creature, and yet also beautiful in an unconventional sense. She says in a subtle way, she is trying to put subterfuge, little ruptures and ambiguities into the one image. “So it’s a pink cat with beautiful soft colours and because it’s hairless there’s an ugliness to the cat. We want to love the image but we don’t feel as satisfied with it so we feel dissatisfied”.230 _{These two images are not simple portraits of}

children and pets but images that destablise social ideals and cultural beliefs about femininity, beauty and perfection. She uses animals to represent aspects of the human psyche and ambiguous ideals of humanity. Since the beginning of time, people have sought out animals to represent human emotions in art, film and books. Furthermore, Hicks creates the illusory quality of the images using a pale palette of colours and soft lighting.

With her hyperreal images, Hicks seeks to counteract stereotypes and dominant ideologies about female gender that operate at both conscious and unconscious levels within Western society. Hicks affirms her work has always been viewed as portraiture but for her it is not about conveying something about the inner qualities of the subject but the outer physical, elusive quality of the person. This can be understood in how Hicks looks beyond mere likeness of a person to highlight how fragile and selective notions of beauty and perfection are in

popular culture. Whether it is a portrait of a nude girl with one arm, a young girl with Albinism (Lauren) or women and girls with animals, she challenges the historical view of female beauty and form in art and photography with

229 _{Interview with the artist, Appendix Four, 338.} 230 _{Interview with the artist, Appendix Four, 338.}

167 falsehoods. For Hicks, Lauren has an illusory, fantastical quality of other

worldliness with her pale skin and white blond hair, more real than real.231

In the three photographs of Lauren, Lauren with Eyes Closed, Lauren in Red, and Lauren with Eyes Open (2003) (figure 58), Hicks asks, who is the real Lauren? She purposefully subverts the perceived objectivity of the camera with subtle changes and invites the viewer to choose the real Lauren from the three illusory, hyperreal portraits.232 _{Hicks again questions conventional thinking around}

female beauty and perfection.

Figure 58: Petrina Hicks, Lauren with Eyes Closed, Lauren in Red, Lauren with Eyes Open, 2003

In presenting these similar photographic portraits of Lauren, Hicks conjures up the kind of variations of an image typically found on a photographer’s proof sheet whether from a commissioned portrait or an advertising session. The three images may look perfect on the outside but explore a sub-text associated with imperfection. Hicks may imply her Albinism, a genetic trait that in itself can be perceived as imperfect, is as an aberration through Lauren’s unearthly and ethereal appearance. In these portraits, Hicks creates an almost sterile aesthetic of Lauren’s ‘whiteness’, removing any imperfections in her pale skin and long sleek platinum blond hair against a clear white background that frames the

231 _{Interview with the artist, Appendix Four, 349.}

232 _{Michael Desmond, “Is the Truth of Portraiture Vested Exclusively in Likeness?” Portrait 21,} (2006).

168 fragility of her idealised beauty. “I chose Lauren as the subject for this portrait because she embodies qualities of grace and elegance. I was trying to create a calm, still and eerie portrait that portrayed an almost spiritual or mystical quality, with an underlying tension between perfection and imperfection”.233

Within this frame of understanding, the portrait bust shot looks more sculptural in form than a photograph of a real person which is somewhat disquieting. This is most evident in the face of Lauren with Eyes Closed, where Lauren disengages fully from the viewer and appears like an object. In neither of the other two portraits do her eyes engage directly with the viewer, however, there is a sense of self-awareness as though Lauren is lost in her own thoughts during a moment of reflection. By disengaging from the viewer, the face is open to more scrutiny, more time to examine the facial features and ponder who is the real Lauren. By presenting a blank face, Hicks is constructing a veiled image of Lauren that conveys little of the person other than her outward appearance, being her paleness, the shape of her face, style of hair and clothing. The portrait of Lauren without clothing provides no clues to the viewer as to her background or

possible character. Thus, such a pose can mask the true identity of the subject. On the other hand, Lauren in Red is clothed providing the viewer with something more tangible than the promise of perfection. The red floral shirt and tie are an accepted style of masculine Western clothing that is not usually worn by women. In these portraits of Lauren, Hicks purposefully questions the thinking around ideals of feminine beauty in contemporary society.

In another image of Lauren (2003) (figure 59), the subject is presented as more real, more human with the movement of her hand to her face and her eyes looking to the side. She appears self-conscious as though observing someone, observing her or some event taking place on her periphery. Again, the image is almost colourless—white on white with her pale alabaster skin, white blond hair and a white shirt—shot against neutral background so as not to distract from the subject being photographed. The only hint of colour is the blue of her eyes.

233_{www.ccpr.murdoch.edu.au.}

169 Figure 59: Petrina Hicks, Lauren, 2003

In preparation for her 2018 exhibition, Hicks is again focusing on the human– animal duality, the illusory fantastical space with images of Lauren, goats, snakes and especially piglets with their smooth pale pink skin.

Continuing with the theme of falsehoods of beauty and imperfection, an earlier image Untitled #1 (2011) (figure 60), is a rather innocuous and yet strange image of four teenage girls, one of whom pulls up her t-shirt to reveal a gaping wound in her side. Hicks again highlights there are alternative truths hidden beneath the surface of perfection. In this photograph, three girls question what they see before them on the body of their companion. Hicks comments, “It is with cold fascination rather than concern or dismay that they lean closer, and one

cringingly probes the open flesh with her finger”.234 _{The image makes reference}

to the message behind a seventeenth century Baroque painting by Caravaggio Doubting St Thomas (1602-3) (figure 61). Caravaggio suggests in true Baroque fashion that there is more to what is immediately evident or understood beneath the surface of the image. American art historian Simon Schama observes

Caravaggio’s painting that shocked audiences at the time “all decorous

euphemisms are abandoned … Christ’s hand with the stigmata on its back steers the horny finger of Thomas deep into the lipped almond shaped wound in his

170 own body …”235 _{Schama further explains it is not enough to observe Christianity}

but to evoke true believers, you must register the spectacle viscerally, on your flesh. True to history, Hicks places the hand of the seduced on the arm of the perpetrator who probes the flesh with her finger. At the same time, she reveals the false promise of perfection to the viewer that beauty is indeed only skin deep.

Figure 60: Petrina Hicks, Untitled #1, 2011

Figure 61: Vincenzo Caravaggio, Doubting St Thomas, 1602-03

Hicks utilises her experience of commercial photography and the editing

software Photoshop to create her hyperreal photographic portraits and moving images. She creates her images in front of the camera, with as little editing as possible and achieves the airbrushed look through lighting in the studio to achieve a hyperreal quality. She shoots her subjects on medium–format film because it has an ‘emotional quality’ over digital, makes high resolution scans of the images and then prints. “I try to get everything right in the sculpture [photo-