A cold rainy day saw us gathered at the Gallery to hear Bryony discuss the photographic exhibition: The Body’s Terrain. The exhibition enabled us to explore the many and varied ways the human form can be depicted. Female photographers were represented by a number of enigmatic studies reinterpreting women as a contemporary Eve or insignificant figures of men and women bathing at the base of a waterfall (Janina Green).
Julie Rapp’s comic study of herself with a horse’s tail challenged the idea that women always need to be beautiful.
Tim Silver’s four panels of an increasingly crumbling prone sculpture of himself spoke movingly of the body’s inevitable decay through time.
We spent some time viewing Bill Hanson’s photo Cupid and Psyche, a dark reinterpretation of a c19th French painting. Two young lovers engrossed in each other’s arms, surrounded by old car bodies and shadowy figures in the dark. Not everyone’s cup of tea...but quite a few felt it showed young love in a striking but beautiful way.
The three studies of the body as landscape (David Moore) melded the concept of low hills with the sinuous curves of the female form. Like other photos in this exhibition these s tudies showed only parts of the human form, departing radically from the formal depictions of nude figures painted as full-frontal figures.
Altogether a satisfying morning’s viewing with members participating in lively discussions.
Meg Dillon
