S/M Wonderland
INSTALLATION · 2014 · AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR PHOTOGRAPHY, SYDNEY
A fantasy world that is a dark riff on the Alice in Wonderland story: Helmut Newton meets Lady Gaga.
This is an ambitious work starting with a short film and including photographs and objects. It was staged at the Australian Centre for Photography in an elaborate installation in which the walls were also painted in a carnivalesque way. The film was set in the former mental institution of Kirkbride, Rozelle, and is an “adult” take on the Alice in Wonderland story while dealing with childhood innocence and the madness of the main “Alice” figure. She runs into a series of sequences in various chambers involving strange dream-like and perverse encounters, finally to end up stricken and spent. This work is inspired after videos such as Rihanna’s “Disturbia” and the more risqué photographs of Helmut Newton. It is also about fatherhood and seeing a child navigate a world of deception and mendacity.
