PERSONAE
Despard Gallery is please to share two reviews of Micheila Petersfield’s solo exhibition Personae.
Andrew Harper (Make And Do) and Lucy Hawthorne (Artist Profile) have both written about Micheila’s solo exhibition and recent shift in mediums. Both arts writers have addressed this shift from photography to paint and how this contributes to the conversation around how women are routinely depicted in various ways across popular media, as well as what this can tell us about how society is conditioned to see.
“I’m not sure. The artist is taking the piss possibly, distorting the traditions she knows well certainly, is aware of what she’s doing for sure, and is very definitely satirising the male gaze, male conceptions of beauty, but by being those things? Does that work? The answer is complex, and it’s probable that it did for the artist.” – Andrew Harper, Make And Do
‘Is Petersfield’s return to painting about labour, each brushstroke physically representing the time invested in image making, as opposed to the more hidden labour involved in digital imaging and Photoshop? Or perhaps it’s a counter to the proliferation of AI imaging. While that question might not be answered in Personae, I look forward to seeing how she addresses this tension between photography and painting in future exhibitions.“– Lucy Hawthorne, Artist Profile
Personae – Solo exhibition 3 – 27 April 2024
Click here to ready the full essay by Andrew Harper.
Click here to ready full review by Lucy Hawthorne.